


The Long Way Home

by roguewrld



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Admiral Thrawn-Style Planning, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Not Thor 2 Compliant, kink meme fill, not Cap2 compliant, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:21:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguewrld/pseuds/roguewrld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Barnes takes the long way home.</p><p>Spoilers for the Winter Soldier</p><p>Additional Warnings: Just as a heads up, this story contains a scene where Clint describes, in detail, being under Loki's mind control and the compulsions he felt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme prompt:  
> Bucky/Steve, the Winter Soldier is a double agent
> 
> When the Winter Soldier is sent to kill Howard Stark, Howard invents a device to temporarily turn off the mind control chip in his brain. The American government want an inside man in the Soviet Union, and the Winter Soldier never knew Bucky was still in there, watching and reporting all his secrets.
> 
> Bonus points if he's only doing it because Steve's dead and there's nothing else to live for.
> 
> http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/6565.html?thread=11733157#t11733157 
> 
> References the 80's comic canon about Bucky being a photographer.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James has spent his entire life protecting Steve. This is just one step farther.

1943

They called themselves the Howling Commandos now, Steve in the lead and James Barnes at his right hand. It was a bit jarring to see him without Steve, the night he found her in the mess, a night when she couldn’t sleep and had bad coffee and a letter from home to keep her company.

He slid into the chair across from her, his own coffee in hand. “Can we talk?”

“About what?” There was a briefing in a few hours, but he wasn’t usually impatient about missions.

“About Howard Stark.”

The rumors about her and Howard never ended. “Howard and I are just friends.”

“I know.” He stared at her over the lip of his cup. “Right now, with the war, there’s been a lot of opportunity for women with the right kind of aspirations. I hear Mr. Wrigley’s even going to put together a women’s pro baseball team. But you and I both know that it’s not going to last.”

She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but he wasn’t.  When the war was over, there wouldn’t be a place for her, not as a uniformed officer. “What does that have to do with Howard?”

“I know he’s not really…” James trailed off. “He likes machines more than people. But sooner or later, a man that rich is going to need a wife, a son. Money buys a lot of leeway. A rich man’s wife could continue her work as an intelligence operative. Access to his social contacts would get her into a lot of places the government can’t see right now, keep an eye out.”

He’s not wrong. She’d certainly thought about it. “And?”

“And, I’m asking you to reconsider.” He glanced around to make sure they were alone then lowered his voice. “HYDRA did something to me. Did Steve tell you that?”

“No.” It’s not in the files either.

“I was a good shot before, but not like this. I can see better, hear better.” He reaches across the table and takes her hand in his. “I know you heard us, but you didn’t say anything, didn’t tell anyone. We can trust you, and I need someone to trust because I can’t protect him anymore. He used to just bleed into the shadows, but now he’s walking around dressed in the American flag. We’re not exactly inconspicuous anymore.”

 “No, you’re not.” She was suddenly very tired. “I’m not planning on telling anyone, James.”

“I know.” He squeezed her hand then let it go. “But I want you to think about something for me. Steve’s a good guy, he would be a good husband, for a woman like you.”

“Does Steve know you’re planning his future?” With me, she doesn’t say.

“No, but I don’t tell him everything.” James leaned forward, his voice conspiratorial. “He needs an Eleanor.”

“And you’ll just… share?” He’s either crazy, or brilliant. She can’t decide.

“The one good thing about being an orphan is you get used to sharing, to never getting exactly what you want.” His voice dropped low again.  “And wouldn’t it be a shame, if Captain America’s wife couldn’t have children, if the government never had a chance to see what his genes could do.”

“That would be for the best.” She looked away from him, at her letter, her friend’s neat handwriting describing the parade of slightly damaged men her parents were introducing her to. “I’ll have to tell everyone I find his awkwardness endearing. Otherwise, no one will believe it.”

“People believe what they read in the papers, and see in photos. And I’m a hell of a photographer.” He stood and offered her his hand. “Come with me. I want to take your photo. I’m going to put it in his compass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr: http://roguewrld.tumblr.com/


	2. Years Go By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Steve fell into the ice, he slept for seventy years. James is not so lucky.

_1943_

Peggy couldn’t stop going over it in her mind, how James had looked her over in the bar, had sat across a table and told her, “The one good thing about being an orphan is you get used to sharing, to never getting exactly what you want,” how James had planned Steve’s future and told lies with his camera. Peggy’s photo was in Steve’s compass and history would make her his widow. It’s not the story James had planned, but it might be enough to protect Steve’s memory.

There wasn’t any time to waste. Peggy wasn’t sure exactly what was in Steve’s sketch book or tucked into James’ cheap dime store novels, but it all had to go before Steve was officially declared dead and the Colonel came to pack up their things. She opened the door to Steve’s room, already thinking about how she was going to get two footlockers down the stairs before someone came looking for her, when she saw them. “Dum Dum. Gabe.”

They were standing at the foot of the bed, hefting Steve’s footlocker, and they both look incredibly guilty. “Ma’am.” Dum Dum looked like he was about to make an excuse, but she held up a hand.

“There’s no time for this. Howard is starting a fire. Where is Barnes’ locker?”

Gabe let out a breath and relaxed a little, but he didn’t set down the trunk. “Morita and Dernier are hauling it out the back.”

“Howard is in the clearing behind the barn. Go find Falsworth, make sure he’s there.” She watched them go, and only once they were well down the stairs did she jerk open the drawer to the small desk in the corner. The only thing in the drawer was a manila envelope, full of Barnes’ negatives. For a moment, she was tempted to open the envelope and see the carefully staged lies the three of them were creating, but that would just be salting her wounds. She tucked the envelope under her arm and walked across the yard and into the woods.

The Howling Commandos were standing in a circle around a barrel, burning Steve’s drawings and the letters he and James had written to each other.  “Gentlemen.” She threw the envelope into the fire. All their plans literally turned to ashes.

It was cold, but no one was enjoying the fire.  Howard stopped tearing pages out of a sketch book long enough to spare her a glance. “I will find him, you know.”

“I know, Howard.” She watched the envelope burn away and the film blister. “But when you find him, I want him to get full honors.”

They didn’t speak again, about what they’d done. The Commandos were back in the war in two weeks later, fighting Nazis instead of Hydra forces.

* * *

1963, NYC

The woman in the mirror was getting older, there was no denying it. Peggy put on a coat of lipstick and tried not to think about the date too much. Maria leaned in the doorway. “Are you ready to go?”

All of them were getting older, even Maria, although she didn’t know it yet. “Of course.” It had been a dark year, the war in Vietnam heating up, and their president dead. It was just a reminder that their best and truest hero died twenty years ago tonight.

She didn’t like Howard’s mansion, wasn’t fond of Howard’s young wife, how perceptive she was. If Howard had to marry a beautiful young woman, couldn’t he have picked a stupid one? Maria hooked her arm and lead her towards the study where Howard was drinking himself numb before the ceremony. “Do you wish you’d taken him for yourself, Agent Carter?”

“No, I don’t think Howard and I would have been happy together.” He had asked, of course, when the war in Europe had ended. If she’d known what he was doing, if she’d know about the bomb, she might have said yes. They would have had each other, at least. Instead, all they had was SHIELD. 

“I don’t think anyone could make Howard happy.” Maria pasted on a smile and pushed open the door to the study. “Dear, are you-”

There was a man wearing black and all that was visible was the back of his head. He had Howard pressed against a wall, one hand around his throat, the other holding a knife to his ear. Howard didn’t seem to have noticed the women enter. “Please, don’t do this. Don’t you remember me? It’s Howard. Whatever they did to you, I can fix it. You don’t have to do this.”

The man in black said, “You’re about to die, Mr. Stark. Do you really want to go out babbling?”

Peggy had her gun out of her thigh holster and she was halfway across the room before she really knew what she was doing. She knew that voice. She’d spent hours sitting around, drinking bad coffee, making plans with that voice. She pressed the gun to the back of the man’s head. “Turn around, slowly. Or I will splatter your brains across Howard’s very nice painting.”

The man turned, and her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. The face was the same, but the eyes...  James Barnes’ body was there, but when you looked into his eyes, the soul was missing. Howard slumped against the wall, his eyes very wide.

Peggy shoot James in the neck when he went for the gun strapped to his hip.

* * *

SHIELD sent over a doctor, who pumped a few pints of blood into James and stiched the wound on his neck closed. All Peggy could do was watch as Howard took x-rays, many many x-rays. “Look.” He put one up on a light box. “There’s something in his head.”

“What is it?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He put up another. “This is his left arm.”

She hadn’t noticed under his shirtsleeve, but it was made of metal. “Howard, if you’ve never seen anything like this, who built it?”

“I don’t know anyone able to work with this level of sophisticated robotics. Give me a couple decades, I could probably get pretty close. First I’d have to start a technological revolution, figure out how to miniaturize electronic components.”

She hadn’t seen Howard this alive in years. “The thing in his head, can you take it out?”

“Not without killing him. But I might be able to turn it off, for a while.”

* * *

James woke up tied to a bed. For a long moment, he was absolutely certain he was back in that HYDRA prison, that his imagination had run completely wild and he’d only dreamed Steve had rescued him and everything that came after but Peggy was sitting next to his bed, so he couldn’t have imagined all of it. “Where am I?”

She’d been reading from a paperback novel and she startled when he spoke. She was older, much older. “You’re in the basement of Howard Stark’s mansion.”

The train. He'd fallen off the train. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days. You lost a lot of blood.” She set her book aside and dragged her chair closer to the bedside. “Barnes, what do you remember?”

“I was on the train.” Peggy bowed her head and he wondered how much he’d lost. There was a bandage on his neck. “Did I take a bad hit to the head?”

“No. I shot you.” She lifted the corner of the bandage. “It looks much better, actually. I was afraid I’d killed you at first.”

She pressed a button and the bed pushed him into a sitting position. There was a large device in one corner that looked like it had been put together out of a scrap bin. It was obviously Howard's handiwork. “Why did you shoot me?”

“You were trying to kill Howard. You really don’t remember anything?”

“No.” His hair itched, he wasn't sure when he'd last showered,  but when he tried to reach up to scratch it he found out both his arms were strapped down. The right one he could at least jerk against the straps but the left one... He couldn't feel it, couldn't move it. It wasn't the worst way he'd ever woken up but it was pretty high up the list. "Where’s Steve?”

“James.” Another woman might have avoided his gaze but this was Peggy Carter, she was braver than that. She untied his right hand and held it in her own. “You fell off the train. You’ve been gone for twenty years and what showed up here three days ago wasn’t you.”

Steve had always come for him before, even when it had seemed impossible. That he wasn't here was worse than the arm James couldn't feel. “Did I hurt him? Is that what you’re saying?”

Her hand tightened around his. It probably would have hurt, if he'd still been normal. “James, we lost Steve during the war.”

“He died?” James couldn't picture that, Steve dead on the battlefield. Not Captain America, nearly bulletproof and indestructible.

The door to the room opened and closed as Howard slipped in. “No, she means we lost him. His plane went down in the Artic. Sooner or later, I’ll find him, and bring him home.”

Howard looked like he'd aged more than twenty years but he still had that manic gleam in his eyes. “There’s something wrong with my arm.”

“I had to turn it off." Howard sat down in one of the metal chairs at his bedside, like that was a completly reasonable sentence. 

"Off?" How the hell did you turn an arm off?

"We weren’t sure who was going to be waking up.” Peggy had that tight lipped expression she'd always given Howard when he'd said something rude. “We think it was injured in the fall. It’s been replaced.”

James pulled his hand out of Peggy’s. At first glance, the arm was fine, just numb. His hand was in a glove though and when he looked under the shirtsleeve all he saw was metal. “Shit.”

“We have no idea where the technology came from, or who you’re working for.” Peggy straightened his shirt cuff, hiding the metal.

"Thank you." It was easier to not have to see it.

Howard was a little more tactful when he spoke again. “What we did, to get you back, it’s not permanent.”

James knew what he meant, that sooner or later, he would be that someone else again, the man who had tried to kill Howard.  The room was silent except for the humming of the machine. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No.” Howard shook his head. “I have something else in mind. The world’s changed, James. If you’re on the other side now, it’s an opportunity we can’t let go.”

It would have been different, if Steve was sitting there with them, but he wasn’t. Steve was dead and James was alone again. If all that was left was the fight, fighting was what he’d do. “I can’t remember anything the other guy did. I don’t even know his name.”

“I’ve called in a favor. Some friends are coming to visit.”

* * *

Howard's friends were from Westchester. They were a few years older than James had been, when he'd fallen off the train and it was strange to think they must have been children during the war. Howard brought one of them into James' room and gave the kind of introduction only he thought was appropriate. "This is Erik. Erik, this is James. He has a cybernetic arm and a control device in his brain. Have fun." 

He took the other man away somesomewhere less underground bunker-like, leaving James alone with a man who was eyeing his arm the way some men looked at attractive women. "Let me see your arm."

"Aren't you going to buy me a drink first?" The joke fell flat. "Never mind. Are you going to remove it?"

Erik looked revolted about the idea. "No. It's a part of you." He lifted the arm delicatley, like it weighed nothing to him.

"Then what are you going to do to it?" Howard had said the men were special, that they had unique abilities. Logan had been like that, he'd healed quickly. “Do you have X-ray vision?”

“No.” Erik peered very closely at James’ shoulder, then at his head which made James pretty sure he was lying about the x-ray vision thing. “There’s no way we’re getting that thing out, not without killing you.”

“You could do it anyway.” It didn't sound so bad, dying. Not after a week in this basement, listening to Peggy's stories about how the world was ruining itself, while Steve long gone. 

“No, I can’t.” Erik was manipulating the hand now. The fingers flexed, the wrist rotated. Howard had called it beautiful. To James, it was ugly and nightmarish. 

“You don’t know me. They have me chained in a basement. I could be a monster.” James knew this was probably his last shot. After this, Peggy and Howard wouldn’t give him another chance.

“I can’t. I owe Howard a debt, from the war.” Erik rubbed a finger against his forearm, but whatever he was touching was hidden by his shirt. James wasn’t sure how a child could owe a debt, but he seemed very serious about it. “I honor my debts, but I’m not a believer. Charles believes in heroes, in the human potential. He grew up on stories of Captain America fighting Nazis with the Howling Commandos.  I met them, they saved my life, but that doesn’t change the truth.”

“What?”

“That men are monsters, and our greatest heroes are all dead.” Erik raised his hand, and a magnifying glass came flying out of his bag straight into his hand. “Your friends want Charles to implant a trigger, a command that will temporarily override the device in your brain. Together, the two of us could do this.”

That wasn’t exactly what James had in mind when he’d thought about getting back in the fight. The man touched a seemingly random place on his arm and an access panel sprang open. He hadn't used a tool, it just opened for him and James was certain he was telling the truth, that this man and his friend could turn him into a double agent and his other half would never know.

The door opened and Howard came back in, with the man who must be Charles trailing behind him. “Erik, can it be done?”

Erik was looking at Charles and James got the sudden feeling that they were having a whole conversation no one else could hear. Not just communicating in looks, but an actual conversation. Erik set down his screwdriver. “We believe so.”

* * *

Charles was psychic, and that almost made James throw in the towel right then and there. “There are some things in there that are private.” And illegal. His head was full of stolen moments with Steve, a serious enough problem before he'd gotten himself turned into an American icon. 

“I won’t pry.”

There was no other way out of this room, no hope to ever be himself again for good. The only thing here for him was Steve's ghost and he couldn't stay locked up with it much longer. “Alright.”

Erik, who had been quietly drawing diagrams of the thing in James' head, actually laughed. “He’s just saying that to make you feel better. We’ll be prying, quite a bit.”

Charles touched his temple and it didn't hurt, at least on James' end. He didn't feel anything or notice time passing but eventually Charles drew his hand back. It was shaking. “It’s done.”

Was it exertion, or what he'd seen? James forced himself to look Charles straight in the eyes. "Steve Rogers was a hero." 

"Of course he was." Charles tried to stand and almost fell over. Erik caught him by the elbow. "I'm alright. The conditioning was stronger than I expected. The other personality is called the Winter Soldier. He won’t remember any of this, but when we wake you up again, you’ll be able to tell us what he’s seen.”

"You're not alright. Give me the keys, I'm driving home." Erik was giving Charles a look, and James could imagine the internal commentary, about how some people refused to take care of themselves. James got it, he'd felt like that a lot, every time he'd seen Steve doing something heroic. 

* * *

“Peggy, what did you do, with the photos?” Before they shut him off, before the Soldier took control again, he had to know.

Her hands were resting on the machine that was keeping James himself and she looked at it rather than him. “I burned them. I burned everything.”

“Good.” He didn't know how long he would be asleep or what his body would do while he was out of control. “Will you be here, when I wake up?”

“For as long as I can.” She flipped the switch and James faded away. Two days later, SHIELD dumped the Winter Soldier out of the back of a van in Germany. The Red Room debriefed him for a week, then sent him back to work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr: http://roguewrld.tumblr.com/


	3. The Other Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winter Soldier is used to losing time...

_1975_

Soyuz 18 had gone down. The embarrassment would be enormous, if it was discovered, and the Red Room had a man who could keep a secret on ice. The capsule had gone down in Aleysk, they told him, or maybe over the border into China. Bring the cosmonauts home, Soldier, and give us the location of the capsule. It could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. The Soldier thought it wouldn’t take very long to find them but as he walked two figures appeared in the snow. They were not the cosmonauts.

One was an older woman, the other black man. The woman said, “James, you should come in from the cold.”

James drew in a shuddering breath. He was kneeling in the snow and Peggy was at his side, pulling at his good arm. “Come on, on your feet. I’m too old to be kneeling in the snow.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulder and made himself stand. “Give me a minute.”

“This is Sergeant Marcus Johnson. I’ve stolen him from the Army.” Peggy was getting too old for field work, he could tell just by watching her walk. “I’m training him for SHIELD.”

He didn’t need it to stay upright, but he kept his arm linked to Peggy’s. It felt good, to touch someone. “Sir.”

Marcus didn’t look impressed at seeing the infamous Winter Soldier face to face, he just looked cold. They had come up to a small cabin. “Inside, before us normal humans freeze to death.”

“How long?” The memories would sort themselves out, as he talked about it, but he always asked. His sense of time was always off-kilter these days. 

“Eighteen months, but you’ve been on ice about half that time.” There was a fire going in the stove and Marcus picked up a metal kettle from the stovetop and poured James a cup of truly terrible coffee. “What are you doing out here? Who is there to execute in Siberia?”

James took a sip and tried to get things in order. “No target. Search and rescue. We had a capsule crash. Can we do this in less than a day? If we take much longer, they’ll die.”

“We’ll hurry.” Peggy pulled her gloves off and warmed her hands over the fire. Her knuckles were swollen.

“Gimme your hands.” She sat down next to him and James took her hand and started rubbing her fingers. Arthritis, probably, Peggy had to be over fifty now. He was just making conversation when he asked, “Where’s Howard?” but Peggy suddenly became interested in the fire.

“He couldn’t come. He had business obligations.”

Her hands were like ice and if he’d thought her interest in the fire was real he would have let it go but James wasn’t buying it. “Bullshit. That wouldn’t keep him away if he wanted to be here.”

Peggy sighed and leaned into him. It suddenly occurred to James that this probably looked really inappropriate to her protégé. “Alright, then. Unvarnished truth is, Howard has gone a bit off the deep end. We thought we were searching for Steve’s body but when you described the hibernation process to him... Howard has become convinced that Steve is alive, and he’s taken to personally going on the expeditions that are searching for the plane.”

“Do you believe that?” On the surface it was ridiculous but he spent half his time frozen these days so who knew?

“Do I believe that Steve Rogers could physically survive decades in the ice? Yes, you seem to manage it and the transformation process used on you was much less powerful.” She pressed her lips to his forhead, less a kiss and more of an apology. “But will what Howard fishes out of the ice still be Steve?”

It was worse, somehow, imagining him alone in the ice instead of dead and James shoved the thought away. It was better if he was dead.

“If you two are done?” Marcus had finished his coffee and he was watching them, amused.

“Don’t make assumption, Marcus.” She kissed him again, this time on the top of the head and opened up a case on the table. There was a reel to reel recorder inside. “James, there was a train derailment last year. We don’t believe it was an accident. What can you tell us about that?”

* * *

_1985_

His assignment had brought him to Paris and she’d been waiting for him in the stairwell after he’d made his kill. The hotel was nicer than most of the places he’d been debriefed and he was laid out on a nice bed as Erik worked, even if he couldn’t sleep.

Erik ran his finger down the side of James’ arm and the metal parted like a zipper for him. “You’ve been upgraded. I’d love to know where they’re getting this technology.”  

Peggy leaned over Erik’s shoulder. “Make sure to take photos for Howard. Assuming I can get an appointment with the man, he’ll want to see this.”

“You’re the Director.” Erik took his responsibilities very seriously. He didn’t think much of Howard’s absences. “He’s the one who should need an appointment.”

“Peggy, stop looking at my insides.” He didn’t mind Erik seeing, but he didn’t want Peggy to be reminded he was something less than human. Every time he saw her, she had visibly aged and he stayed the same. “Are you going to chase after me forever, Peggy?”

“As long as I can.” She touched the mattress next to him. “May I sit?”

“What’s mine is yours, you know that.” He’d given her Steve, what was a few inches of bed space? “And in a few years, when you can’t come after me anymore, what happens then? Can you find someone else?”

“I’ll try. Charles was as exact as he could be, given my regrettable tendency to age.” She slid her fingers between his on his human hand and gave them a squeeze. “It would have to be a mutant, someone who could mimic me very closely.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” The Winter Soldier had too much blood on his hands for James to stand much longer. If he’d been able to sleep, James was sure he’d dream of the children he’d killed. “Please, Peggy.”

 “I’ll put in a request.” She was his friend but she was also the Director of SHIELD and James knew it was bullshit. Maybe her replacement would be a softer touch. Her eyes were starting to drift shut and she yawned. “I’m sorry, James. I didn’t get any sleep on the plane.”

“You can lay down. It’s a big bed.” He wasn’t expecting her to take him up on it, but it was just Erik here with them so she toed off her shoes and stretched out next to him.

She was telling him some story about Howard’s son when she drifted off. James was almost relieved not to have to make small talk anymore, her dismissal of his request still leaving a bitter taste.

“I won’t let them.” Erik hadn’t spoken in almost an hour but it wasn’t like James could forget he was there with him wrists deep in James’ arm. “I think my debt is long paid. I was experimented on, in the camps. That’s what the Commandos rescued me from.”

“Erik, you don’t have to tell me.” He’d suspected, of course, he’d known Erik was Jewish, seen the tattoo but he never talked about it.

“It’s alright.” Erik drew his hands back and the arm sealed up with no hint he’d been messing around inside it for the past few hours. “When I agreed to do this, it was something you wanted. If it’s not anymore, I won’t leave you like this. After the Director is dead, we’ll come for you. I already have someone in mind to help me.”

“And then what? It’s never permanent, Erik.” Eventually, he would have to sleep and the Soldier was always the one who woke up.

“And then, I’ll remove the chip.” Erik said it like he was offering to buy James a drink but he knew what it meant, they both did.

Serum or no serum, there was no way James would survive that. He was offering him an out. “Thank you.”

* * *

_1989_

They were losing Berlin, but there was no one to shoot, no one to stop. The Soldier stood on the balcony of the hotel room anyway, looking through a telescopic lens at the crowd.

The Black Widow was standing in the doorway, watching him. He thought he’d trained her, she knew a few too many of his tricks, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way, she’d been a good partner this past year, even if she asked too many questions, like he was one of her marks. “Do you feel cold?”

He wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d become a little obsessed with her.  She was beautiful and powerful, the Infinity Serum pumping through her veins and her hair was red. He liked red hair, on a woman. It just seemed right, he wasn’t sure why. He touched her hair, without really knowing why he wanted to. “No, I don’t feel the cold. I don’t really feel anything.”

“I could make you feel something.” The Widows were programmed for seduction and she’d been lobbing passes at him for their last three missions. There was no real reason to say no but he hadn’t figure out what she wanted yet. She pressed her body against him. “Come in from the cold and I’ll show you.”

It wasn’t just the words, Charles would never have been so careless, it was her hair and maybe the way she smelled. Either way, the switch flipped and James was suddenly kneeling on the floor of the balcony and the Soldier was out cold.

The Black Widow had taken a step back and drawn a gun. It was pointed at his head. “I seem to have triggered something. Are you programmed to kill pretty girls who want to warm you up?”

“No, it’s not a kill order.” James was surprised to find he was . panting for breath and he made himself suck in a few deep breaths and tried to get his thoughts in order. After a moment, the disorientation went away. It was 1989, he was in West Germany and the Black Widow had triggered his sleeper switch in the middle of what was shaping up to be a populist revolution. “I’m fine. I just need to report in.”

“Let me help you.” She got him to his feet and helped him walk inside. She let him drop onto the mattress. “Here.” She gave him the handset and put her finger on the rotary dial. “Tell me the number.”

“No, they wouldn’t like that.” He hooked his finger into the dial, trying to remember the number that worked in Berlin. “Get me some water.”

The number rang once and then it was hijacked to call a SHIELD switchboard. James didn’t give whoever answered time to speak. “I’m awake. There isn’t much time, do you have someone in West Berlin?”

“I’ve got a man there.” The voice was familiar. Peggy’s shadow, Marcus. Good, he could be counted on.

“There’s a complication.” The bathroom door opened and she had a glass in her hand. “I’m not alone.”

“Understood.” There was only the sound of the dial tone after that.

She set the water glass down on the nightstand. “What did I trigger?”

“I’m not sure. They’re coming for me.”

She tried to slide into his lap and he flinched. “I see.” They sat next to each other in awkward silence until there was a knock on the door.  

“I need you to leave.”

“Fine.” She pushed past the unassuming man on the other side of the door without even looking at him.

“Guten Abend.” The man was carrying a briefcase and he set it down on the table. There was a tape recorder inside, which was familiar at least although James thought it had gotten smaller again. “Do you need to know my name?”

“No, it’s not important.” Marcus would only have sent someone he trusted. “All I want to know about is Director Carter.”

“The Director retired last year. Heart attack. It didn’t kill her but she isn’t up to traipsing after you anymore. I’m sorry.” He did actually look sorry, which was something. “We’re seeking alternatives to keep in contact with you but nothing has worked out so far.” He flipped the recorder on. “Tell me how you work up, Sargent.”  

 “It was an accident. Not something we should count on being able to repeat.” He didn’t want to ask about the favor he’d asked Peggy, but it turned out he didn’t have to.

“I’m not authorized to kill you. SHIELD believes it may be possible to wake you up again someday.” There was a moment’s hesitation and then he said, “I believe we’ll be able to wake you up again someday.”

By the time the Black Widow came back, the Soldier was alone in the room, sitting on the edge of the bed, pressing fingers to his temple. She opened the bag she’d gotten at the drug store and took out a bottle of aspirin. Retrieving the untouched glass of water, she joined him on the bed. “Feeling better?”

He touched her hair again. It still drew his attention. “I told you I don’t feel anything. But you’re welcome to try.”

* * *

_1991_

It was almost Christmas and their world was falling apart. The Widow was sitting on the couch, knees curled to her chest, watching the TV with a hateful expression. “Gorbachev has let everything slip through his fingers.”

It was getting too hot to stay here. Several of their comrades had been executed, some by their own handlers. All the Red Room’s experiments were being swept under the rug, before the eyes and judgment of the West could fall on them.

“He will resign. Soon. Then the union will crumble.”

“Let’s leave.” The Soldier knew she was under less direct control than he was, her work demanded it. She still had her mind and a personality, even if it wasn’t the one she’d been born with. “Let’s just go, before it all falls apart. We were programmed for survival. Staying here is suicide.”

“Where would we go?” He felt something stir in his brain. A failsafe, maybe. They shouldn’t be talking about this.

“The US.” She turned off the TV and climbed into his lap. “Come with me. Please.”

“I…” No, he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t let her leave, either.

“When I triggered you, that night in Berlin, the other man, he had more freedom. I could do it again, and you could come with me.”

He couldn’t remember what she was talking about. “The other man?”

She drew back, her face suddenly closed off. There were many personalities knocking around in the Widow’s head, but the Soldier thought he was alone in his own head. Not that the Room would have told him, if they thought he didn’t need to know. She pressed her lips to his ear. He could see her hair out of the corner of his eye as she whispered, “Come in from the cold.”

It was the first time James had ever come to sitting down but it didn’t turn out to be any less disorienting. There was a woman in his lap and after a few seconds he was able to identify her as a Black Widow. She was smart, deadly and she had been the Soldier’s lover for the past three years. “Hello.”

“Hello.” She smiled at him, and it was a trusting smile. She thought she knew him. It was an absolute certainty that if they didn’t run she would be dead before the end of the year. Too much had been done to her in the name of the State for the Red Room to allow her to live. “I assume you’re packed for this fiasco. Let’s go.”

She slid off the couch and grabbed a bag from under the bed. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” James thought of Steve, dropping behind enemy lines to find him. The Widow was a Soviet weapon but she’d been his partner. They’d protected each other, bled for each other. He owed her for that and she was probably the last person alive he had a debt to. “I can get you out of the USSR. That’s all that matters.”

James took her as far as the Chinese border. He hadn’t slept in three days, drank coffee and taken stims to stay awake because if he slept the Soldier would wake up. It was the longest stretch of time he’d had in control of his own body in decades, the first time he’d shaved his own face since the day they’d ziplined onto the train. It had been Steve standing behind him then. Now, it was only this woman. “You’re going to have to go on alone. Leave me here.”

“You’re not coming?” He ran water in the sink, washing away the foam from the shaving cream, cleaned his blade. The Widow grabbed his wrist. “Why? We’re almost there.”

“Because I need sleep.” He pulled his hands free from hers. “When this body wakes up, I’ll be gone and the Soldier will be back. He will kill you, because he has no choice. You need to go, right now.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“Maybe. Probably.” Almost certainly. She was beautiful. It would be dangerous, but he could go with her. She would have to trigger him every morning and maybe one day it wouldn’t work but he could tell her everything and go with her. But he wouldn’t. He was tired. He wanted to be with Steve again.

The Widow darted forward and kissed him. It felt familiar but he didn’t respond. She pulled back with a sigh. “I suppose you’re too smart for that.” She touched his face and told him, “If you survive, find me. I don’t like debt. Wherever I am, find me.”

He’d be dead within a week, won’t even have to man up and do it himself, but he was a good liar. “I will.”

* * *

_2013_

The blind was on a rooftop and the Soldier got into position, his scope giving him a clear view into the windows of the embassy. The target wasn’t in his room but the Soldier was patient, he could wait. He was good at waiting.

Someone taped his shoulder and it was a testament to his training that the Soldier didn’t jerk, didn’t swivel the gun, he just slid back a bit and looked up.

It was the target, wearing a nice suit and an irritated expression. “You do realize this embassy is sovereign Latverian territory. Your presence here could be considered an act of war, against whatever government you work for.”

The Soldier reached for his blade, but the target was faster, grabbing him by the throat. “I have no home, no family. I have been exiled here, to suffer the justice of the King, and yet you pursue me still. Why?”

The Soldier choked out, “Murderer,” and the target laughs.

“Yes, and what are you, then? How many people have you killed?” The target gave him a shove so hard the Soldier fell over backwards. Before he could roll to his knees, the target put a boot on his chest. “Who do you work for?”

The Soldier didn’t answer. He may have outlived his usefulness, when he’d let the Widow slip his grasp and he would probably die on this roof but it was warm here, summer just setting in. He wouldn’t have to go back in the ice.

The boot was replaced by a knee and suddenly the target’s face was a lot closer. “Are you aware you’re under an incredible amount of mind control? It’s actually quite impressive.” The man was exerting a pressure disproportionate to his size and the Soldier’s chest started to hurt. “Do you know who I am? Did they tell you?”

The Soldier shook his head no. All he had was a photo and an address. It was all he thought he’d need.

The man’s fingers pressed against the Soldier’s forehead.  “They call me the Liesmith, but the truth is Odin is the real liar. My very shape is a lie and so is yours. There is something in your head. I’m going to take it out.”

The man’s fingers weren’t just pressing against his forehead, they’re pressing in and it hurt, it hurt. There was a screaming order in the Soldier’s brain, to self-terminate before he was fully compromised but the target had him pinned somehow and his hand was reaching INSIDE your head and ---

There was a moment of searing pain, and James Barnes found himself pinned to the ground by a good looking man. Not the man he was normally pinned by but since he couldn’t remember where he was or how he got there, it’s going to have to wait. “What is that?” The man was holding something in his hand. Whatever it was, it gleamed with some kind of fluid.

“I took it out of your head. It’s been in there for a long time. A mortal lifetime, at least.” The man rolled to his feet and slipped the thing into James’ pocket. “Give it a moment. You’ll remember.”

The worst part is, he’s right. It all came crashing back, like it always did. The fall, the cold, the Red Room, his arm. James manages to get to his knees before he started throwing up. When he looked up, the man was holding a clear bottle. It was water, cold and clean. “Do you have anywhere to go? Anyone you can trust?”

James had been on ice since that Christmas he’d snuck the Black Widow out of the Soviet Union. James realized he didn’t know her name, if she had known it herself. “What year is it?”

“2013.”

More than twenty years. Peggy was probably dead, Howard too but Marcus could still be alive. Of course, all the numbers he knew were twenty years old but it was worth a shot. “I need a phone.” The man slipped a cellphone out of his pocket and handed it to James. It looked like something out a science fiction pulp comic, not like a phone at all. “Why are you helping me? Why not kill me?”

“I could tell you a story, about lying to children and mistakes and falling and betrayal. But really, I think it will be hilarious.” The man was smiling and there was something… off about it. “When you tell Fury that Loki saved your life, please, take a photo. Keep the phone, I can access the photos remotely and I may want to talk later.”

The man had a weird vibe but the Red Room wanted him dead so he can’t be all bad. James punched in the first phone number he could remember and listened to it ring. After a few long moments, someone picked up. “Fury.”

Who the hell was Fury? “This is James Barnes. I’m awake.”

“Barnes?” It was Marcus. He’d always had a taste for dramatics. “Barnes, where the hell are you?”

“I’m on a roof in Manhattan.” James looked back, but the target, Loki he had called himself, was gone. “Can someone come get me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr: http://roguewrld.tumblr.com/


	4. Two dead men walk into a SHIELD Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is nothing but the job. Can you understand that?

He’d been expecting a black sedan. Instead, the guy from Berlin rolled up in a red convertible. “Get in.”

James slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. It was a hell of a car and the guy had come through for him twice now. “Alright, this time I’ll ask. What’s your name?”

“Phil Coulson but I’d prefer if you didn’t go around sharing that. There was an incident.”

Right, the guy was an SHIELD agent. “No one here but us dead guys?”

“Exactly.” Jesus. James had been kidding. “Can you tell me how you woke up?”

James reached into his pocket and pulled out the chip. “My target ripped this out of my head.”

When they stopped at a red light, Phil glanced over. “That was buried in the Medulla Oblongata of your brain. Erik Lehnsherr is quoted more than once claiming he couldn’t remove it without killing you. Who was your target?”

“He called himself Loki.”

Phil seemed like a steady guy. He didn’t have any real obvious tells but his hands clenched on the steering wheel and he stared straight forward. “Did he say why?”

“He thought it would be funny.” They were winding their way through Time Square now, and there were huge TV screens showing ads. “Was whatever he did to you supposed to be funny?”

“I’m sure he thought so.” The man swung the car into an underground garage. “Loki isn’t from around here. We don’t always understand why he does the things he does but he loves chaos. Bringing back Bucky Barnes and delivering him into the arms of SHIELD? That’s going to cause plenty of chaos.”

* * *

Marcus was wearing an eye patch. “They can’t replace that?”

“Not all of us need bionic parts, Barnes.” Marcus flicked James’ metal arm, tied up in its sling. Without the control chip, it was just dead weight.  “Loki doesn’t usually do favors for SHIELD.”

“It wasn’t a favor, exactly.” James hadn’t snapped a photo but Loki had been right, Marcus’ expression had been priceless. “I don’t understand why this is such a big deal. Get Erik in here, have him turn my arm back on and put me back to work.” He couldn’t just sit around. He’d go crazy.

Marcus laughed. James had never heard him laugh before, it was a little disturbing. “Barnes, you have been on ice for twenty years. I can’t just give you a PSG1A1 rifle and send you back into the field.”

“I don’t need to know how Loki’s cellphone works to sit in a perch and shoot things.” He heard Phil mutter something under his breath about snipers but James plowed ahead. “There is no one that’s even going to care I’m alive, unless you’ve got the Black Widow stashed somewhere. Call Erik, get him up here and by the time he’s got my arm fixed I can be up to speed.”

 “Coulson, sit down before you fall over.” Fury shoved a chair in the other man’s direction. “Things are complicated right now. Six years ago, I would have teamed you up with Barton and watched the two of you stage a ‘World’s Deadliest Sniper’ competition.  But that was before Iron Man, before an alien invasion, before two Norse gods decided to use Earth to settle their childhood traumas. Even if you could get up to speed on the disaster zone that the last two decades have been, I cannot bring Erik Lehnsherr here.”

“Why?” Erik had always worked on his arm, whenever he had woken up close enough for Peggy to fetch him.

“As the leader of Genosha, we could argue Lehnsherr has diplomatic immunity.” Phil was toying with one of the medical instruments, staring off into space. “Sir, Natasha may have taught Clint how to hide, but the Winter Soldier trained her. Barnes may be our only chance to bring them in before…”

“Before Barton finds out what I did and cuts out my eye?” Fury looked James over. “We’ll take the carrier to Madagascar. If Lehnsherr can get your arm working and you can get caught up, we’ll talk about putting you back in the field.” He turned and walked out of the room before James could get him to clarify on who, exactly, Natasha was.

“Are you… okay?” Phil had gone somewhere else in his head. James had seen guys do it in the prison camps. “I’ve got questions, if you’re up for it.”

Phil shook his head, shook away whatever ghosts he’d been seeing. “I’m fine. You should know that we found the Widow, one of our snipers convinced her to come in. She became a SHIELD agent.”

“You brought in the Black Widow alive?” James figured the Soldier could have done it, if he’d had to, but a normal guy? “How good is your sniper?”

“She thought it was you.” Phil touched his chest, the way Erik used to touch the number on his arm. “Six months ago, during an alien invasion, I was killed in action. I woke up in a hospital a few weeks later. She and Barton had already taken off.  We can’t bring them in, but you could.”

“I’ll find them.” He owed the Widow, owed Natasha, for having the Soldier’s back. “Can you catch me up on what I’ve missed? Did Gorbachev resign?”

Phil loosened his tie, put his feet up on the second visitor’s chair. He looked like he was settling in for a long story. “On Christmas day. We thought the powder keg was going to finally blow up, but mostly things quietly fell apart.”

* * *

When they got to Madagascar, Erik came on board wearing a cape and armor. James didn’t laugh but only because Erik hated being laughed at. He couldn’t believe Charles had let him leave the house like that.

“Welcome back.” Erik untied the sling and James’ mechanical arm should have dropped limply to his side but Erik caught it with his powers. “I was told you had been killed. I would have come looking for you if I’d known. It’s likely Mystique could have woken you up.”

“Too much invested in me, I guess.” He didn’t like waking up and finding everyone around him older. James got the feeling that in a few more years, Erik would have been gone too and then James would have been out of luck with the whole mechanical arm thing. “It’s good to see you.”

“You’d be surprised how infrequently I hear that these days.” He pulled a pen, pencil and a notepad out and set them where James could see them. The pen was metal and it wrote out, ‘Are you a prisoner?’

“No, Erik.” James caught the pen as it was writing out ‘We can go out the window’. It looked bad, he was sure, Coulson sitting in the corner and the guard standing outside.  “I’m safe now but I need your help. Never could stand medical leave but the whole one armed sniper thing doesn’t really work.”

“Medical leave.” Erik was looking at James like he was crazy and the pen twitched again. ‘I can fly now. The window is right there.’

“There is nothing but the job. Can you understand that?  No family, most of my friends are dead. So I need you to fix my arm, put a new chip in my brain and get me back to work.” James couldn’t just sit here while SHIELD tried to work it out. It was too much time to think, he’d die, he knew he would.

Erik sat down beside the bed, apparently giving into the madness. “Alright. I understand duty quite well.” He made a gesture and the metal shell on James’ arm slid back. “The mission continues.”

“Thank you.” James let his head fall back against the pillow. It always felt weird when Erik was rummaging around in there and the man did have twenty years of upgrades to catalogue so they were probably going to be here for a while. It was just small talk to ask, “So, what’s Charles up to?”

He could feel the metal in his arm shudder and Erik wouldn’t look up. Damn it. “I’m sorry. No one told me. I thought you guys had decided to retire somewhere warm, I didn’t know he was gone.”

Erik regained his composure and the metal stopped vibrating.  “No, Charles is alive, he’s fine. We’ve parted ways.”

“Parted ways.” He’d last seen them a long time ago but there had been children at the school. They’d been happy, he was sure of it. “That’s a hell of a euphemism, Erik.”

“We had a disagreement. He got the house and the children, I have Genosha.” James thought disagreement was a euphemism too, because they were powerful men, even with Charles in a wheelchair, even this old.

James didn’t say he was sorry, because Erik doesn’t appreciate things like that. “Can you remake the chip?”

“I can make drawings. There's an advanced chip fab in New York that can produce it.” Erik sealed the arm back up.  “I need to return to the island for the evening, but before I go, there’s something you should know.”

* * *

Computers had changed a lot in twenty years but the basics remained the same and James could type because the Soldier could. YouTube had hours of the video showing the Avengers and the internet was full of theories. The guy in the metal suit was definitely Howard’s son and James tried to shove the guilt aside. Howard had made himself crazy, looking for Steve and James was willing to bet it gave the kid a complex but if the guy decided he wanted to play Batman that was his own choice.

There was the Widow, still young thanks to the Infinity Serum. A sniper, an incredible shot, who had to be the man Coulson had talked about, the one who had brought in the Widow. A very large green man, the Hulk. A big blond, supposedly the actual Norse god Thor. And there is a man dressed like Captain America, wearing the American flag and carrying Steve’s shield and James had never been so angry.

Howard had wasted his entire life looking for Steve while Peggy had been traipsing around the globe after him long after any sane woman would have given up.  It was wrong, using Steve’s memory like this, no matter how bad things were.

Phil came by after breakfast, coffee cups in hand and files tucked under one arm. There was a small smile on his face until he saw the laptop and James’ expression. “I take it you have more questions?”

“You put someone in the suit.” It wasn’t just that. Whoever it was had been a careful study. If he hadn’t known better… “You’ve got someone walking around, dressed up like Steve Rogers. Did you think that wouldn’t upset me?” They were lucky his arm wasn’t working. He’d spent part of the night thinking about punching walls, about punching Fury. “Are you people crazy? Who do you have running around in that thing? Please tell me you didn’t put some normal guy in that suit, carrying around that shield like the fucking target it is. Tell me he’s a metahuman or a mutant, something.”

Phil set his files down and put one of the coffee cups in front of James. He pulled up a chair and took a sip from his own cup. “After 1963, Howard Stark started taking a team of doctors on the expeditions with him. Their specialties varied, but always a cellular biologist and always a doctor from Canada, preferable someone who had worked above the Arctic Circle. He had to pay those guys a fortune, but he wanted them because they were experts in treating frost bite, on saving limbs and fingers and toes. He brought psychologists, people who specialized in treating veterans, people who specialized in treating torture victims. It was all pointless.”

James half-wished the Soldier was still with him. If he had been, James could have gone to sleep and never have to hear the truth.

“Stark died in 1991 without ever finding him. But that was before the world really started heating up. Stark Industries was still sending out the expeditions every year, under some kind of maritime research grant. The winter of 2012 was the warmest winter on record. They found him,” There was something bright in Phil’s eyes. “I brought him home, supervised his thaw out. He was alive.”

James’ whole world slides a bit sideways. “That’s him?”

“It’s him.” Phil swung the monitor around and his smile was back.  “He led the team against the aliens. I was in a coma for it, but I got to see the video when I work up.”

“He’s okay?” James looked closer at the screen, and yes, he could believe it was Steve. It couldn’t really be anyone else, not the way he was swinging the shield. It was too perfect. “Is he still…” Was he still Steve, but how would Phil know?

“Fine. A bit disoriented by the future, but fine. He’s here, in the city, if you want to see him.”

“No.” The word slipped out before James even knew he wanted to say them. In his years undercover, his body had done terrible things, the kind of things you never forgot, could never go home from. He couldn’t see Steve. “No, I can’t.”

“Okay.” Phil looked confused but he didn’t ask any questions. “The carrier is heading back to the US so we can get the chip you need fabricated. By the time we get home, I want to get you up to speed on the current political climate. Things are a bit complicated right now.”

Complicated was also a euphemism.

* * *

Phil wore a ring on a chain around his neck, right over the still healing scar on his chest. He rubbed at it, absently, while he talked. “When Barton caught up with her, she’d been running for three weeks. She never said from who, I’m not sure she knew.  She was exhausted, injured and out of ammo. She was still dangerous. He was supposed to take her out from a distance.”

“Smart plan.” The Widow was at her deadliest when she was lying in your arms, but being in the same room as her wasn’t much better.

“She made him. She knew someone was there, watching, but she thought it was you. She started talking, about how she’d always known you would find her, that you would be the one to kill her. She said she was tired of running, that she was ready. He wouldn’t pull the trigger.”

“When was that?” James had seen her in the video clips, she hadn’t aged since he’d last saw her. As far as he knew, she hadn’t aged a day since her twenty fifth birthday.

“Twelve years ago.”

Phil was rubbing the ring again and it suddenly occurred to James that it was a wedding ring. “She’s your wife?”

“No.” Phil shook his head, like it was funny.

“I’m not jealous. She was the Soldier’s girlfriend, not mine.” Girlfriend was the wrong word but James couldn’t think of the right one, if it existed in English. “I’ll find her for you, Phil. It’s alright.”

Phil reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet. He took a picture out of a plastic sleeve and slid it across the table to James. “SHIELD is a place a man goes where there isn’t anywhere else. The normal rules of a military or intelligence operation don’t apply, because everyone that works here is a little off. If you’re going to work for us, you need to understand that.”

The picture was of the sniper. Natasha had taken it, he could tell by how it was framed. Even when they’d been pretending to be tourists, her snapshots always looked like surveillance photos. Barton was watching TV, his head pillowed on Phil’s shoulder. It was an intimate photo, the kind of thing James had one staged between Peggy and Steve.

James glanced between the photo and the ring, swallowing his questions. There used to be questions you didn’t ask and the world had changed since then but he wasn’t sure how much. “I’ll bring him back to you.” When that was done, he could think about Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr: http://roguewrld.tumblr.com/


	5. A Brief Segue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a year, since New York

May 2012, Shawarma

Clint balled up his piece of foil. “Okay, I’m pretty sure there’s about three months’ worth of psych screenings waiting for me, so I’m done for today. Can I borrow someone’s phone? I want to call Coulson.”

Steve took a bite of his food, hoping that chewing would give him a few seconds to think of what to say but no better way to say it came to him and he didn’t shirk his duty. He met Clint’s gaze, and the focus there made him distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. We lost Agent Coulson during the attack on the helicarrier.”

“Tasha?” There was a hint of disbelief in Clint’s voice, like he thought maybe Steve was lying to him.

“You didn’t need a push, you were already standing on the edge. I didn’t know what you’d do if I told you.” She touched his arm and he jerked away. “I was going to tell you. Just not here.”

“Excuse me, then.” Clint pushes his chair away from the table. “I have to go take care of some things.”

“Clint,” Bruce had startled awake in his chair and he was staring at Clint with concern. Steve tried to reframe Clint’s reactions. He looked too calm. When a man looked like that, you didn’t let them be alone. How long had they known each other, worked together? “Sit back down. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“I was his emergency medical contact. They can’t release the body until I go sign.” Clint picked up his bow and left without saying another word.

Thor pounded his fist against the table, hard enough to crack the linoleum. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was breathing shallowly. “Stark, I would have words with you. My family owes a great debt to SHIELD, for the lives my brother has taken.”

Tony nodded as the door swung shut. “I’ve got a ton of lawyers, big guy. You want to pay restitution, they can make it happen.”

* * *

 

Clint took the cards from Fury and all he could think about was how mad Phil would be that they’d been ruined. “Was this really necessary, sir?”

“For Rogers and Stark, yes, it was.” Fury was looking at him, sizing him up. “Are you really back with us?”

“Yes, sir.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask to see the body, and no one had offered.

“Come back tomorrow after we send our alien friends back home. We’ll release the rest of his things to you.”

The blood was dry and Clint brushed the cards into a neat pile before he tucked them into his tac vest. There was nothing else he needed here. The only personal item Phil had was his wedding ring and Clint wasn’t going to take that, not even over Phil’s dead body. “Am I dismissed, sir? It’s been a long day.”

“Dismissed, Agent.” Fury looked just as exhausted as Clint is, so at least there was that. “Come back tomorrow, Barton. It’s important.”

* * *

 

They were sending Loki back to Asgard in an hour. Clint thought about putting an arrow in his left eye. Thor had promised he was helpless in those chains, but a god could live through an arrow to the eye, Clint was sure of it. He wouldn’t use a bow, he would do it up close and personal. The thought made him feel calm, even as the rest of his life felt like it was spinning out of control.  

The door to the observation room opened and Thor joined him. They watched Loki through the one-way-glass in silence until Thor couldn’t take it anymore. “Heimdall has been watching this world for me. I have some idea of what my brother has done to you.”

The arrow was a standard point, designed for target shooting. It was much less dangerous than most of his arrows but Clint was still clenching it hard enough to bleed. “It’s been a hell of a week, Thor, and there aren’t a whole lot of things your brother hasn’t done to me during it. Say what you mean or get the hell out.”

“We are making reparations for all your dead, but I have spoken to Jane and she tells me the laws of this country are strange.” Out of the corner of his eye Clint could see Thor shift in his chair, obviously uncomfortable. “You cannot inherit from his house.”

Clint finally looked away from Loki and saw Thor, saw how miserable he looked. “This is New York, Thor. My name’s on the deed to our apartment, and I can collect his life insurance, bury him. I can’t get survivor benefits or his Social Security, but I don’t think I’ll live long enough to worry about that. I’m fine. I don’t need any blood money.”

“I must do something.”

“You can’t make it up to me. There’s nothing you can do to make it up to me.” But Phil was more forgiving than Clint, he’d had to be. “But Phil was really bothered by homeless vets. He was a Ranger, before SHIELD recruited him.”   

“Stark has given me some of his clerks. They will make arrangements.”

“There is one other thing.” His hands were getting sticky with blood and Clint made himself let up a little. Is Valhalla a real place?”

“It is.”

“Will you visit him? Tell him I’m alright?” Phil had died before he’d known Clint was back, and he could maybe live without Phil but he can’t live with Phil thinking the enemy still had him.

“Of course.”

* * *

 

Bruce was doing something with a pair of tongs and some very ornate chamber, giving the Tesseract back to Thor. Clint just felt numb. He didn’t want to go back to the helicarrier, doesn’t want to debrief. He wanted to go somewhere quiet and be drunk for a very long time.

Natasha leaned over. “Let’s run away.” He couldn’t help but smile, because he knew she meant it.

When they all went their separate ways, Steve on his bike, Bruce and Tony going back to Manhattan, he and Natasha got a car and just drove. Wherever they went, Natasha spoke with a heavy accent and played the mail order bride, telling everyone her husband had just gotten back from Afghanistan. No one said a word about his weird twitches and Clint was pretty sure she was the best friend anyone had ever had.

* * *

 

When Barton didn’t come back, the decisions regarding Phil’s medical care ended up Marcus’ responsibility. He went down to the secure room where they were keeping him, hooked up to machines. This was not a long term solution and it should have been Clint in here, making these calls. He pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. “Not that I’m admitting a mistake, but I may have slightly misjudged Barton. I don’t think he’s coming back until the world starts to fall apart again.” Phil, of course, didn’t answer. His chest roses and fell in an even rhythm from the respirator. “Phil, I really need you to wake up. That’s an order.”

Marcus may or may not have punched the wall, but there was no one there to see. When he left the room, he grabbed the first doctor he saw. “We need to talk.”

* * *

 

Spring 2013 (Post IM3)

There was a tiny phone tucked into one of the saddlebags of Steve’s bike. It had a little keyboard and Steve understood, on a basic level, how it worked. He had a hard time typing on the tiny keys but Tony sent him messages every once in a while. He was apparently on some kind of quest on his way back from California.

‘In Portland. There are too many musicians here.’

‘Found 3 cellists. None of them from NY.’

‘Wild goose chase. Pepper says there is no cellist.’ That was a little unexpected. Steve pressed the button on the side of the phone and asked it politely, “Call Tony.”

The phone dialed Tony’s New York number, ringing through to his pocket in Washington State through some miracle every single person he’d met thought was normal. “Steve, did you know Pepper has developed the ability to lie to my face?”

“No?” He’d met Miss Potts for all of ten minutes.

“There is no cellist in Portland, there has never been a cellist.”

Tony sounded grumpy and it made Steve smile, just a little. “So, who are you really looking for?”

There was a moment of hesitation and Tony said, “Turns out, cellists have bows.”

This was something they should have known before Clint and Natasha took off because the world confused him but this? This was something he could understand. If there was anything Steve understood, it was secrets and cover stories. He’d lost the secret he loved very much over the side of a train. “We shouldn’t have let him go identify the body alone. No wonder he vanished.”

There was another moment of silence, the kind that used to mean you’d lost the connection and Steve was about to hang up when Tony started laughing. “You really are perfect, aren’t you?”

“No.” No, he’s certainly not and Tony must know it, as Howard’s son. Howard had known all of Steve’s secrets.

“I’m on my way back to New York, with the kids in the back of the car. We’re going to go bother Bruce. You should come hang out with us.”

The ‘kids’ had to be his robots and Steve wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to hang out with robots. “Not yet. But soon.” He’s not ready to come home, not yet.  

“See you soon, Cap.”

* * *

 

When Phil came back from Tahiti, after a year on lockdown, his scar was mostly healed and he was fit for duty. He was alive, and alone. It was only Marcus waiting for him when he came into HQ. “Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.”

A few months in a coma followed by rehab wasn’t funny, no matter how happy Marcus was to see him up and around. “Spare me the fairy tales, sir.”

“Just the facts then.” Marcus handed him a tablet with a video of the Battle for New York queued up. “We won. They avenged you, sent Loki packing.”

That was good to hear, Phil was glad to know Loki wasn’t sleeping in the presidential quarter in DC but the room was still empty. He didn’t need to ask who had taken Clint out, because Natasha wasn’t here either. If it had been anyone else, she would have been here, she wouldn’t have left him alone. “Is there a body?”

“No.” It felt like getting stabbed again, until Marcus grabbed his arm. “Phil. He’s alive. We got him back.”

It’s not a lie, he could tell when Marcus lied but there was something he wasn’t saying, some other reason Clint wasn’t here. “Then why isn’t he here?”

“I may have given Stark and Rogers a little push, told them you were dead.”

“A little push.” It had been a long flight and he still didn’t feel right, didn’t feel quite himself. He didn’t have time for Marcus’ bullshit. “And would you have given Clint a similar push?”

“He wouldn’t come in for debrief. He rabbited.” The Nick Fury persona Marcus wore like a suit didn’t do defensive but that was pretty damn close.”

When things got to be too much for Clint, he ran. He’d spent a long time positioning himself as the person Clint ran to, even before they got involved. It wasn’t a surprise he’d run, if Marcus had lied to him. “I’ll find him.” He knew Clint well enough, knew some aliases not on SHIELD’s lists. It would take some time but he didn’t need to sleep as much as he used to.

“He took Romanoff with him.”

Phil swallowed a groan because Clint? Clint could be predicted, with enough familiarity. Natasha couldn’t. She had aliases for her aliases and contacts she’d never shared. Natasha had trusted her partners, not SHIELD. “You shouldn’t have let them out drop off the radar. It’s going to take years to find them.”

“I’m doing my best, Coulson, but my best man’s been laid up in the hospital for the better part of a year.”

Maria had offered Phil a jet and a team of his own.  He took her up on, but only so he could have access to SHIELD’s resources.

* * *

 

A year after the battle, Steve came back to New York. It was still home, even if it was bigger, brighter and louder.

Tony had given him a crash course on 21st century superheroes, about vigilantes, mutants and metahumans and then he’d disappeared into his lab with Bruce to try and fix Ms. Potts before she burnt out.

It meant Steve spent a lot of time alone and once Pepper was better he’d instituted Movie Night. Every Wednesday, provided no one was out of the country, they got together at eight o’clock. Of course, no one else that lived here was anything close to punctual. Steve was always in the movie room first and tonight was no exception. He took up at least three quarter of the available space on the couch and decided to give them fifteen minutes. “JARVIS, can I see the guide, please? Standard scroll speed.” He watched the scroll, amazed as always by how many channels there were and how little he actually wanted to watch. “Do you have any recommendations for tonight?”

“The Avengers preference range too widely for me to give an accurate recommendation, Captain.” JARVIS’ disembodied voice didn’t bother him anymore. The world outside of the Tower was off putting, not at all how he’d imagined the future, but Tony had created the future the Stark Expo had promised him, full of robots and sleek metal design. It was reassuring.

Something on the list caught his eye. “Halt scroll.” There was a special on the History Channel,

Steve finds the outside world sort of off-putting, not at all how he’d imagined the future, but this Tower, full of robots and sleek smooth m ietal, reminds him of the movies he and Bucky had watched, of the Stark Expo. It’s reassuring.

Something on the screen catches his eye. “Halt scroll.” There is a special on the History channel, called ‘The Howling Commandos and HYDRA: The Third Front.’ “JARVIS, let’s watch this until everyone else gets here.”

The show was more than half over and it was mostly old news reel footage and people being interviewed who were too young to have been there. They showed a few of Bucky’s photos, the ones they’d put in Stars and Stripes and Steve had JARVIS pause the show, suddenly curious. “Do you know what happened to our things? My sketchbook, Bucky’s negatives?”

“According to Howard Stark’s journals, he and Ms. Carter burned them shortly after your death.”

“I gotta say, Steve, I was pretty bad with women before Pepper, but none of them ever burned my stuff.” Steve turned and Tony was standing in the doorway of the room, a bottle of scotch dangling from one hand and a glass in the other. “Although, now that I think of it, that was probably Pepper’s doing.” He dropped onto the couch next to Steve and held out the bottle. “I’ve seen this one. The next bit is an interview with Dugan. I recommend you chug.”

Steve took the bottle, not that it was going to help if it was upsetting. Dum Dum was old and it made Steve happy, that he’d lived to be old. The banner running across the bottom of the screen said the interview as shot in 1990 and that Dum Dum had been the last of the Commandos. That didn’t seem to include Peggy, who was still hanging on by her fingernails but history didn’t seem to understand her very well.

“Captain America has become a legend, Mr. Dugan. History strips it’s legends of their humanity. Is there anything you’d like the people to know, about Captain Rogers?”

Dum Dum smiled for the camera. He was wearing that stupid bowler hat and a chestful of medals. He’d been the head of SHIELD when he’d died. It was his words Steve read whenever he dug into old cases and Steve missed him, missed all of them. “Yeah, there is. I want you to know that he was a person, that he wasn’t some saint. I’ve got a story I never told anyone, but I’m the last one. Everyone else is dead now, so I guess it’s okay.”

Steve chugged. If Dum Dum had told the world Captain America was gay, this was the first Steve was hearing about it. Was everyone being polite? Did they think Dum Dum had been lying, or joking? But the story Dum Dum told wasn’t about Bucky at all.

“It’s about Peggy, Agent Carter. The woman was a professional, an intelligence agent and a hell of a shot with a pistol. When Bucky told us they were having some grand romance, we laughed it off. The Captain was the perfect soldier, but it didn’t make him less awkward with women. Apparently, she liked that. I saw her one morning, sneaking out of his room, wearing yesterday’s clothes. Bucky showed up for breakfast late, said he’d been sleeping in the barn. It was the only scandalous thing I ever saw them do, but I don’t think the Cap liked sneaking around. I found a ring, in his footlocker, when I cleaned it out.”

The screen cuts away to a photo of the Commandos and Steve said, “JARVIS, enough, please.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, he couldn’t imagine what Tony was thinking.

“I’ve got Everclear. Incredibly awful tasting, but strong.”

Of all the lies Bucky had strung together to protect him, this had to be the most incredible. “Tony, did your dad ever talk about this? The ring, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Tony held out his hand for the bottle and Steve gave it back. It was hard for Tony to talk about Howard. “He told me about how he had it snuck in from London. I don’t know what happened to it. Dugan’s family gave most of his stuff to your museum, but the ring wasn’t there. Dad said he’d probably given it to Peggy.”

There was a lot he could have said but it all died in his throat. The world had changed but he hadn’t, he was still hiding. All that came out was a confused sounding, “I never bought a ring.”

“Okay.” Tony offered him the bottle back. “So where did it come from?”

“I don’t know.” He’d known Bucky for almost their entire lives and the man never did anything half way but this was absurd. “One night, I went to sleep and when I woke up, Peggy’s picture was in my compass and the Commandos were telling the troops how Cap was in love with a British spy. I wouldn’t have put it past Bucky to have bought a ring and snuck it into my stuff.”

Tony glanced at the tv. “JARVIS, let’s have some sea animals or something? Before we get Commandos burned into the screen.” The view switched to giant sea turtles swimming placidly and Tony pasted on the expression he thought was reassuring. It wasn’t. “People fall in love, Steve. If your friends decided to be pains in the asses about it, it was just practice for living with me and Bruce.”

“It wasn’t a push. It was a conspiracy.” The word isn’t exactly right, but he can’t think of a better one. Steve had thought Tony, at least, knew the truth. What he’d told Steve about Coulson would have been a closely held secret, before the ice. “They took it to their graves? All of them?”

“Took what?”

“I parachuted behind enemy lines to get Bucky back. I went on a crazed rampage after he died and then I crashed a plane into an ocean. Then, our friends burned all our belongings even though Howard never believed I was dead.  What do you think they were hiding?” There had been things, once, to show what they’d been to each other. Letters he’d written to Bucky, signed only with his initials. Sketches he’d made, photos Bucky had taken and developed in secret. It was all gone now, Peggy and Howard had made sure of it. “I loved him and they erased us.”

“Huh.” Tony paused the sea turtles and stared at the frozen screen like what Steve had said was a revelation. “You know, that actually explains a lot? Stark Industries was one of the first companies to offer domestic partner benefits. Dad was really adamant about it, he gave interviews ridiculing our competitors, he even endowed a charity. They paid for a chunk of the lobbying to get marriage passed in NY.” He looks over at Steve and he had switched to that fake smile he always wore when he talked about Howard to the press. “He tried to change the world for you.”

“Did you guys start without me?” Bruce had a giant bowl of popcorn and a smile. The smile slipped away quickly into a nervous expression. Steve had seen that look before, on the faces of men who had wandered into a mine field. “Did I miss something?”

“Sea Turtles.” Tony gestured at the screen with his bottle.

“I’m gay and Howard was a terrible father.” It was better to get it over with, really. Who was Bruce going to tell?

“Is the media outside, circling the Tower?” He looked a little green just thinking about it.

“No?” Anything’s possible, but they haven’t done anything that attention gathering in a while.

Bruce flopped into a recliner. “Then let’s watch a movie.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Steve had been on ice a long time but he watched the news. He’d seen the terrible things people still said.

“Unless you two have recorded a sex tape and it’s about to break on CNN, I’m really not interested.” Bruce held out the bowl of popcorn. “JARVIS, find us something with lots of explosions.”

JARVIS started ‘Independence Day’ and no one talked. Steve missed home with a physical pain some days but he was learning how to live here. His friends had his back.

About the time Will Smith shouted that he could have been at a barbeque, Bruce looked away from the screen and asked, apparently totally serious, “There isn’t a sex tape, is there?”

“Bruce,” Tony sounded totally scandalized. “My father grew him in a lab. Even I have limits. Also, Pepper is scary.”

“And there goes the moment.” Steve stole the popcorn from Bruce.

* * *

 

They’d come north at the beginning of summer, when the anniversary had rolled around and Clint had started to fray at the edges again. The cabin was on a lake and the neighbors were friend enough. Clint was teaching some of the kids from next door how to shoot his sixth best bow when Natasha came out to bring him a beer. To the neighbors, he was sure she looked happy and smiling but he could see the tension on her frame, the way she was coiling to bolt. She gave him the beer and pressed a kiss to his temple, her voice a bare whisper. “Someone is watching us. From the trees.”

He smiled at her, glancing over her shoulder at the trees. “Thanks.” She was right, there was a shape watching them from the woods. He’d slipped up, forgotten to keep watching.  It was starting to get dark, he sent the kids home and went inside. Natasha was throwing things into a laundry bag. “Do you know who it is?”

“No. Yes.” She paused, a nine millimeter clip in her hands. “I think it’s the Winter Soldier.”

Clint would put himself toe to toe with any any human sniper in the world and a few of Xavier’s guys who were somewhat more than human but the Winter Soldier? He’d thought the Winter Soldier was an assassin boogeyman until he’d met Natasha.  Even if her stories were exaggerations, the Winter Soldier was a Red Room creation and the Black Widow’s mentor. Clint wasn’t exactly at the top of his game lately. “We need to bolt. Go back to New York, go to Stark. The Tower-”

She dropped the clip into the bag and jammed shirts on top of it, covering the guns. “Oh, I’m going to New York. But you’re not. It’s not safe for you to come with me.”

“Is it safe to leave me alone?” He’d gotten the impression that even a year later, Nat still thought he was a psych case. Clint couldn’t remember the last time she’d left him alone for more than an hour or two.

“Safer than letting you go up against the Soldier.” She was shaking. He’d never seen her like this, the only thing she’d ever been afraid of was the Hulk. “Don’t tell me where you’re going. I don’t want to be able to give you up.”

He grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her in close, held onto her because he didn’t have anything else left. “You told me you turned him into someone else, once. Could you do it again?”

“He would have to be this close. I don’t think that’s going to happen.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead and pulled away, picked up her bag. “I’m going to tell the neighbors I’m going into town to do laundry, ask them if they need anything. Wait one day, then go.”

He watched her drive away and whispered, “Don’t die.”

* * *

 

Steve wasn’t actually a morning person. His metabolism was a bear and the doctors had been very adamant he eat every four hours. He always woke up hungry, he needed to eat right away even though most of the time he could barely keep his eyes open. When the stumbled into the kitchen, he didn’t even notice anyone until he’d eaten an apple to the core. “Natasha?” She was sitting in the dark, her guns set neatly on the table. When he turned on one of the small lights, she was staring hat her guns. She was pale and her hands were gripping the edge of the table.  “Natasha, are you alright?”

“We were in the Adirondacks, and someone was watching us. I believed it was a Red Room operative, the Winter Soldier.” Her eyes were wide, because she was sitting in the dark, but he was also pretty sure she was afraid and that made Steve a bit nervous. He got the impression Natasha was sort of unflappable. “I thought he was after me, so I left Clint in the cabin and took off. I wasn’t followed.”

Steve sat down at the table, trying to figure out what was going on. “Isn’t that good? That he didn’t follow you?”

Her eyes darted up from the gun. “He was supposed to follow me, Rogers. He was supposed to follow me all the way back to New York, all the way back to this building, and down to Bruce’s lab.”

Right, she was afraid of this guy. Why not unleash the Hulk against him? Bruce’s floor, as well as the labs and common spaces were designed to contain the Hulk, so she wouldn’t even be risking anyone else. But this man she’s been willing to set the Hulk on wasn’t here. “If he didn’t follow you…”

“I made an assumption that he was there for me. It was reasonable, given our past association.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “He is a master sniper.”

“So is Clint.”

“Clint is the best humanity can offer, but he is just that, human. The Winter Soldier is not.” Natasha took a deep breath. “I think I’ve killed him.”

“Natasha.” He took one of her hands, carefully. He doesn’t need an electric shock, not at six am. “You don’t know what for sure. Give me five minutes, we’ll wake up Bruce and Tony, and we’ll figure this out.”

She nodded and Steve did his best to get it done in less than five minutes.


	6. All Roads Lead to New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two snipers take a road trip back to New York. Things go downhill from there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but this section needed to be on it's own. 
> 
> Honestly, Julorean was pretty spot on.

Clint waited 24 hours and then he called Enterprise and got a rental car. He drove south for hours, not going anywhere in particular, until a Ferris wheel rose over the highway and he knew it was time to stop. It was peak season for the hotels but he managed to get a room even if it cost a small fortune. He parked the car and paid for an admission ticket. He bought fried dough at the first stand he saw and wandered the midway eating it. It was nothing like Carson’s when he was a kid, this was a big scale operation and there were something like ten thousand people milling around the fairgrounds. He blended in, he was as safe and anonymous here as he would be anywhere.

He was leaning against a pole, watching people try and shoot out the center of paper targets with wildly inaccurate guns when another man stopped to watch.  “Do you think they know they’re wasting their money?”

Clint shrugged, not really paying attention. “It’s their money to waste.”

“I could do it. Think you could?”

A cursory glance at the guy screamed vet, which meant those were fighting words. Clint balled up the wrapper and threw it into the garbage can. “You’re on.” While he lined up his shot, something was stirring in the back of his brain. The guy looked familiar but he’d served with a lot of guys who were good with a gun.

Clint obliterated the star from the center of his target and the booth guy looked a little nervous as the guy set up his shot and did the same. It was the way he held the rifle, the way he slung it over his shoulder when he was finished, the way he smiled. Holy shit. “You’re Bucky Barnes.”

“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” Bucky, no, James, his name had been James, set down the rifle and took his prize.

“It’s what it said on your trading card.” Phil was personally obsessed with Cap but he’d had the complete set of Howling Commando trading cards. Bucky had always been Clint’s favorite. Orphan, sharpshooter, smartass. He was relatable to a fuckup like Clint, when Captain America seemed to high an ideal to reach for. “Am I dead? Did I crash my car on the way here?”

“No.” James smiled and it was just like in all the pictures. “Let’s take a walk, Clint.”

There was nothing to say, really. Clint followed him off the midway, into the diary building. The day got even more surreal when the guy he’d read about in Phil’s comics bought ice cream. They sat out on the grass and Clint couldn’t take it anymore, he had to ask. “You’re dead. You fell off a moving train.”

“Steve crashed his plane into the ocean and turned into a block of ice. He’s fine.”

It was a good point but, “Steve has the super soldier serum.”

“I have something else.” James dug his spoon into his cup of ice cream. “HYDRA was experimenting on prisoners of war. Steve kept it off the record, but they did something to me. When I fell, I didn’t die.” He glanced up. “There are things worse than dying. They unmade me. I did things for them, without a question or a complaint. I had a perfect record until they sent me after Howard Stark. A SHIELD agent took me out and I woke up in Howard’s basement.”

Unmade. That was what Natasha had called it. It was something Clint could relate to. “That would have been in the sixties. Where have you been since then?”

“In the field, playing double agent for SHIELD.” James shook his head. “Howard and his brilliant ideas. He could turn off the other guy with the flip of a switch but he could never make it stick. SHIELD just kept me out there, working. To give you an idea, when I met Fury he had two eyes and his own name.”

Clint whistled. Even knowing that Nick Fury was a title was a Level 7 secret. “So, why bring you in now? Why not before New York?”

“It’s a long story.” He wasn’t eating the ice cream, more like toying with it. “I got a little outside help, woke up me again. When I got back to New York, he sent me looking for you.”

“Why?” He’d killed his friends and Phil, even if it hadn’t been his hands that was still on him. If it was possible for Fury to have a best friend, Phil was it. He would have come for Natasha, but Natasha had gone back to New York. “Why would Fury send you after me?”

“Fury didn’t send me.” James pitched his half-eaten cup at a garbage can. “I told Phil Coulson I would find you and bring you home.” The world tilted sideways. “Here.” James held out a Starkphone and something about it’s shiny green shell made Clint feel nauseous. “Call him.”

It was a lie, it had to be, but it would be easy to make sure. Clint was Hawkeye and Hawkeye’s hands never shook but god, it was hard. He punched in Phil’s number and it rang. In those first few desperate days, he’d called and called, just to listen to Phil’s voicemail message. This was different. “Agent Coulson.”

Clint almost dropped the phone and his heart started thundering in his chest. He could still hear Phil, faintly. “Hello? Barnes, hold the phone up to your ear and talk normally.”

It wasn’t an order, not for him at least, but it made it easier to put the phone back to his ear. It couldn't be real. “Phil?”

“Clint.” It was his voice. God, it was good to hear his voice. “Please come home.”

“Where have you been?” He was so angry, suddenly. He'd lived with the memory of that morgue drawer for more than a year. He'd believed. Clint wanted to throw the phone at the wall but it was a nice one and it was Bucky Barnes’ so he didn’t. “Fury told me you were dead.”

“I was. They brought me back. Eight seconds, and then I was in a drug induced coma. Fury shipped me out to a grass hut to recover. I’m sorry, Clint. I came back as soon as I could.” Phil’s voice felt like cool water and Clint clenched his eyes shut. “Please. I need you.”

Eight seconds? “Six hours, maybe seven. I’m coming.” Clint hung up and put his head between his knees. “Fuck. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Do what you need to.” James hesitantly put a hand on the back of Clint’s neck. “You need some water?”

“Just give me a second.” Clint sucked in a few deep breaths and waited for the spinning feeling to pass. Fury had lied. Fury always lied, but this was worse than normal. 

“Alright.” The hand withdrew. “Where’s Natasha? Were you two meeting here?”

“No.” Clint finally felt a bit steadier. He looked up at the sky, wishing he was higher up but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “She went back to New York. She thought you were the Winter Soldier, come to settle an old score.”

“I am.” James said it so softly it took a moment to sink in and Clint went for the sidearm that wasn’t there, not in public. “I mean, I was. I’m not him anymore.”

It was a bit elaborate, for a hoax, unless Loki was involved, in which case nothing was too elaborate. “You’re telling me SHIELD knew you were the greatest assassin the world has ever known and they just left you with the Red Room?”

“Howard asked me to stay the Soldier. They studied my arm, debriefed me. I knew a lot of secrets and my worse half never knew I was there.” James held out his hand and hauled Clint to his feet. “The perfect spy, alone in the lion’s den. The Widow was the only one watching my back.”

“She’s good at that.” They abandoned Clint’s rental car and took James’.

* * *

 

They were just past Albany when the silence started getting to Clint. “You never did answer me. Why you? Why risk someone so valuable?”

“Fury’s been trying to bring you in for months.” James was staring out the window, watching the trees edging the thruway fly by. “The Widow isn’t easy to find, when she doesn’t want to be. No one else was up to the job.”

“It’s not like Fury, even if he was doing it for Phil. He’s not cautious but this was a big risk, one he didn’t have to take.” Clint wasn’t worth it, no matter how much fuss Phil had made. “If the world was ending, we’d have come back. He wouldn’t have had to find us.”

“Coulson isn’t doing so well.” James pressed his fingers to the window, still staring outward. “They wanted to give him a team of his own and a jet. He wouldn’t take it. He told me he felt off. He needs you, Fury found you. I don’t think Fury has many friends, but Coulson is one of them.”

“He could have told me Phil was alive.” Clint was happy Phil was alive, he really was, but he was also really angry. “The only reason not to tell me right then and there was to keep it from Thor, which is a dick move. You don’t keep things like that from your allies.”

“I don’t know if Fury can actually stop playing the game.” James had known Fury a long time, and he’d watched the man go from Peggy’s protégé to the kind of man who ran SHIELD, with all the politics involved. “I don’t know if I can either.”

“Natasha keeps telling me the things I did under Loki’s control aren’t my fault.”

James didn’t answer.

* * *

 

James swung the car into the garage beneath Clint’s apartment building and parked in Clint’s space. Lola was in the next space over and the knot in Clint’s chest let up just a little bit more. “Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem.” James had taken the last hour, when Clint had been too antsy to steer.

If it had been an ordinary day, after an ordinary mission, he would have invited James up for a beer, but Clint didn’t want anyone seeing them when he saw Phil again for the first time. “Do you have somewhere to go?”

“Hotel room. I’ll be fine. I’ve done this, you know, from the other side.” James gave him a little smile, like they were sharing a private joke. “It wasn’t the sort of thing you need an audience for.”

“Be careful.” Natasha was here somewhere, convinced an assassin was on her tail. She was at her most dangerous right now. “I left Tasha a voice mail but until I see her, she’s not going to believe any of it.”

“I’ll be fine.” James stuck around long enough to see Clint get into the elevator then he left the garage and drove around aimlessly. Eventually, he found himself a few blocks away from Stark Tower. Phil had told him Steve was up there somewhere, blissfully unaware James was alive. He was tempted to keep it that way, no matter how much he missed him. That way, Steve wouldn’t have to know that James had spent the past fifty years killing people for the Red Room, doing it willingly for SHIELD, because he’d thought Steve was dead. When he’d thought James was dead, Steve had carried on as a hero. James hadn’t and it made him feel ashamed.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Erik’s number. “So, how much does it cost to call the other side of the world, these days?”

There was a chuckle. “Almost nothing, as long as you have international calling. How is your chip functioning?”

James touched the base of his neck, where a small metal plate protected the chip. Erik had done some work on his arm as well, a tune up, but SHIELD didn’t need to know about that. “It’s fine. You do good work.”

“I do excellent work, James. Are you done running errands for lovesick spies? Is your mission complete?”

“Barton is taken care of.”

“And the Captain?”

“In Stark Tower. It’s not a good idea for me to try and go in there. Not unless I learn to fly. Besides, the Black Widow has it out for me. It’s not safe.” James hesitated for a moment then asks, “I need a place to be for a few months. Is the offer you made on the carrier still good?”

“I’ll send Mystique. She’ll fly you back to Genosha.”

“Thank you, Erik.” Steve had always been the brave one. He remembered, just in time, to ask what Mystique look like but Erik just laughed at him and hung up.

* * *

“That’s him.” Natasha passed the binoculars to Tony. “In the sedan.”

Tony looked and he could see the car she meant, a few blocks away but with excellent vantage of the Tower. He passed the binoculars back. “He’s got a Starkphone. JARVIS, who’s he calling?”

“The phone is dialing the Governor’s residence on Genosha, sir.”

It could have been worse. Tony was reasonably sure Erik wouldn’t pull all the iron out of his blood. Still, “That’s not exactly comforting, JARVIS.”

Steve’s voice came over the speakers. “Who is he calling, and why is this not comforting?”

Tony threw up a video window, making sure Steve and Bruce were in position in the lobby. “The governor of Genosha is a metallokinetic mutant who calls himself Magneto.” There was a lot more Tony could have said, but it was hard to separate Erik from Magneto these days.

“Then you’re sitting this one out. If he comes in, Bruce and I will handle it.”

“Yeah, good idea. JARVIS, can we tap into the sound?”

“Yes, sir.”

The speakers switched to Magneto’s voice asking, “Is your mission complete?”

Another man’s voice said, “Barton is taken care of,” and Natasha made a strangled sound.

“JARVIS, cut audio. Keep recording.” Tony isn’t sure if he should touch her, or even talk to her. “Natasha?”

She was already heading for the elevator. “Not now, Tony.”

“I can’t let you go kill him in the street.” She opened her mouth to say something, but he raised his hands. “I get betrayal, you know I do,” He tapped the place where the arc reactor had once been, “But Clint wouldn’t want you to give up everything for him. Let us help you.”

* * *

James was tired. It had been a long day, topped off by six hours in the car. He needed to find a hotel, like he’d told Clint he would and wait for Erik’s friend to make contact. He let his eyes drift closed. It was a mistake, he knew it as soon as he heard the back door open. James opened his eyes, tried to sit up but it was too late. A garrote slipped around his neck and when James looked in the rear view mirror he saw Natasha. Coming here had been a big mistake.

“What have you done with Clint?” Her eyes were full of murder. He’d never seen her like this and they’d killed a lot of people together.

She gave him just enough slack to draw in a breath. “He’s with Coulson.”

“Wrong answer.” She jerked the wire tighter again. “He was my friend. I don’t owe you that much and you were stupid to think otherwise.”

The driver’s door opened and a man shoved him over the the passenger side of the car. Natasha slid over with him, which was good for keeping his head attached even if he still couldn’t breath. The man put the car into drive without saying a word and drove toward the Tower. They pulled up to a locked gate and the man used a retinal scanner. The gate rolled up and let them into a garage. When he finished parking the car, Natasha let up on the garotte and the man pulled James from the car and dropped him onto the concrete floor. His eyes were very green.

James could breath again but when he tried to sit up the man put his boot on James’ chest, shoving him back down. “Do you know who I am?”

James was about to say no when he realized where he’d seen the eyes before. This was the Hulk, wearing his human shell. “Look, I don’t know what the Widow has told you, but I’m not your enemy.”

He hadn’t even seen her get out of the car but all of a sudden she was there, her fist connecting with his face. “Don’t you dare lie to us. How long have you been working for the Brotherhood?”

His jaw hurt, his neck hurt but he’d had worse. Mostly, James was really confused. “The who?”

“The Brotherhood.” Natasha grabbed him by the front of his shirt and shook him, hard. “You were just on the phone with their leader, don’t play dumb.”

“You mean Erik?” She cracked him across the face and he heard his nose break. The new pain didn’t do anything to improve his confusion.

“Why did the Brotherhood put a contract out on Clint?” Her fingernails were digging into his shoulders, hard enough to draw blood on the side with flesh. “Answer me!”

“I’m not the Soldier, I’m not working for anyone.” It was the wrong answer and Natasha grabbed him by the ears and slammed his head against the concrete. The whole world started swimming. He couldn’t really see her anymore. “We met in Berlin, do you remember? And then again, in Moscow, when I helped you escape? I’m not him. I’m-”

Two more blurry shapes joined the group standing over him. For a second, he was convinced the small one was Howard, swooping in to save the day but Howard was dead. The big blur knelt down, and he’d know that voice anywhere, even after seventy years. “Bucky?”

James reached up and patted at Steve’s chest. “Hey, buddy,” and then his brain decided it was tired of being hit and everything went black.


	7. Do you remember?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James is not coping very well.

When James woke up he was back in SHIELD Medical and Phil was sitting at his bedside, watching TV on mute. “Here we are again.”

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Phil turned the TV off. “Very stealthy, Barnes. You lasted a whole hour in New York before Natasha bashed your head in.”

“In my defense, Stark’s property surveillance is way more sophisticated than I was told.” James pushed himself into a sitting position. At least his arm was functioning this time. The Avengers were notable absent. “I was expecting a crowd.”

“Oh, they’re here.” He didn’t seem too angry for a man that had been pulled out of his lover’s bed. “I know you don’t want to see Steve. I don’t understand it, but I’ve been respecting it. The problem is, he won’t leave without seeing you. When Fury asked him to leave, told him that you didn’t want to see him, the Captain punched him in the face. The Avengers are keeping him company in the brig.”

James groaned. Steve had never let anyone keep them apart, not even the US Army. He didn’t know why he thought Fury would have any better luck. “Of course he is.” James peered over the edge of the bed and found his boots. He sat up and started pulling them on. “Will Fury let him out, if I can convince him to go?”

“The Director wants the Avengers out of HQ before Stark breaches our firewalls. Also, I can’t go home until someone else takes responsibility for them.” When Phil stood, James noticed his shirt was buttoned up wrong. “I really want to go home, Barnes.”

Right,  an hour. They’d probably barely wrapped up round one when SHIELD called. “I’ll take care of it. Show me where you have them stashed, then head out.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. The Avengers have proven themselves to be a bit unpredictable.” The elevator ride to the brig seemed to take forever. “They almost killed each other during the Battle for New York. We’re still not sure how much of that was Loki.”

James could hear Steve before they even walked into the room. “They gave me a piece of paper that said he was dead. That was two years ago. Agent Coulson is alive. What else is SHIELD lying about?”

He could hear Natasha, trying to talk him down. “I told them he was dead. That’s on me.”

“And letting us thing Agent Coulson was dead? Letting *Clint* think his husband was dead?” Steve was off and running, James knew he’d be pacing the room even before they walked through the door.

“Looks like a team to me.” Steve was indeed pacing like an animal. The door to his cell was wide open. If they’d wanted it to stay locked, they should have kept his teammates out. Clint and Natasha were on the floor, leaning against each other and Bruce and Tony were writing on the walls.

Steve stopped dead in his tracks. Then he stepped forward, slowly, like if he moved too quickly James might disappear. “Bucky.”

“Ste-” He managed to get the first syllable out before Steve darted forward. Then his mouth was busy doing other things. Steve’s kiss was full of desperation, of decades apart even though Steve hadn’t lived them like James had. Maybe it had been worse for him, waking up here alone.

For a minute, it was like they were totally alone, one of the dozen other times they’d come back from missions they’d barely survived. It was the sound that made James pull away.

Phil had dropped his briefcase. His mouth was a little open and he was staring. James hated being stared at. “Everything okay over there?” They’d never talked about it, in the weeks he’d been searching for Clint and Natasha. Maybe they should have.

“I’m fine.” Phil reached down and picked up his briefcase. When he straightened up again, he looked very much the government agent in total control. “Barnes has agreed to vouch for you, Captain. You’re free to go.”

Steve wasn’t really paying attention. His hand was still tangled in James’ hair.

Clint pulled away from Natasha, whose gaze made James feel a little like a prey animal. “We’ll catch up tomorrow, Nat. I have to take Phil home now. I think they broke him.”

Natasha waited until they were gone, then rose. The flight urge didn’t get any better. He’d taught her everything he knew and she’d had decades to get better while he was on ice. “I’m not sorry.”

“I know.” He’d made her, after all. He was lucky she’d needed information. She could have snapped his neck, he’d seen her do it with the kind of casual ease that would probably make her teammates’ skin crawl. “You’re usually a bit subtler with your interrogations, and you used to be able to tell when your target was lying.”

“Your criticism is noted.” She extended her hand. “Natasha Romanoff.”

“James Barnes.” He shook it. She didn’t electrocute him with whatever gear she was wearing on her wrists so James decided to count it as a win.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then, James Barnes. Stark, do I have a room in that monstrosity somewhere?”

“JARVIS will hook you up.” Tony capped the marker he’d been using. The wall was covered in an elaborate timeline. He’d obviously already gotten through SHIELD’s firewall, documenting every time the Winter Soldier had been debriefed.

He’d also been telling tales because Steve was tugging the gloves off his hands. James hated when Steve looked like that, like he’d failed at something. “Don’t. It’s fine.”

Steve shook his head. He’d always been stubborn. “It’s not fine. You have a robotic-”

“Cybernetic.” Stark was leaning in closer, staring with open interest now.

“Cybernetic arm. I thought you were dead, Bucky. If I had known, I would have come for you.”

“I know.” He gave Steve’s arm a squeeze. “I’m alive, you’re alive, no one’s being mind controlled. It’s fine.”

“You just have really low standards.” Steve gave him back his gloves. “We read through most of the files. Everyone thought it was impossible to rescue you. How did you get free?”

“Not here.” He didn’t want to talk about it in SHIELD, where anyone could be watching, but he still hadn’t managed to get a hotel room.

“You can come back to the tower.” Tony made another note on the wall. His handwriting was apparently the barely legible one.  “We’ve got sturdy beds and sound-” Banner jabbed him in the ribs. “What? All I’m saying is I designed the bed frames for the Hulk and the walls have top of the line soundproofing, right out of our labs. Do you want to subject some unsuspecting hotel to super soldier reunion sex?”

Bruce pushed his glasses back up his nose and translated from Stark to English. “What Tony meant to say was that he’s currently collecting strays, including Steve and I, to fill up his giant tower full of unrentable apartments. So you’re welcome to come stay with us.”

* * *

He really was planning on telling Steve about Loki right away but he’d forgotten how susceptible he was to Steve’s hands. Steve kept touching him on the ride back to the Tower, like he was afraid James might disappear. By the time they got into an elevator, alone, those hands had untucked his shirt and unbuckled his belt.

When the door finally opened again, James had forgotten all about talking. Steve led him into an apartment and when they were inside muttered, “Privacy Mode,” to no one James could see. Then he shoved James against the front door and kissed him again.

He was still wearing his jacket and he shoved back far enough to shrug it off. After his reaction in the brig, James had been expecting Steve to say something, maybe call this off but his concern about James’ arm being metal seemed to have passed. All he said was, “Tell me I’m awake. Please.”

Had Steve dreamed when he was in the ice? The Winter Soldier hadn’t but in the weeks between waking up on that rooftop and Natasha bashing his head open all James had dreamed about was Steve. So he got it. He did.

“I’m here. I’m real and I’m here.” This was a really bad idea and James knew they should stop but what came out of his mouth was, “Is there a bed in here somewhere?”

“This way.” Steve pushed James’ shirt off his shoulder and let it fall to the ground with his jacket.

Steve’s room was dimly lit with the red indicator lights every single piece of technology seemed to have these days. It was more than enough for them to work with. Whatever else that had happened to them, they still knew each other in the dark.

* * *

He woke up from a nightmare where his target had been Steve, shouting. Steve, in bed beside him with a sketchbook, didn’t even flinch. James pushed away thoughts of what Steve’s nights had been like since they thawed him out. If he didn’t think about it, it was like a hundred other mornings they’d had like this. “What are you working on?”

“A sketch I did from memory. I got a few things wrong.” Steve brushed his fingers against the metal of James’ arm. “Can you feel that?”

“I feel enough.” He had fine motor control but everything felt distant. Erik had promised him an upgrade but it was going to involve some neurosurgery.

Steve’s fingers circled around his wrist and he set the sketchbook aside to sprawl out beside James. They’d fit into a single once, a lifetime ago, but this was better. “Are you an active agent? Do you need to report in?”

“No. I think I’m done with SHIELD.” He’d found Clint as a favor, for Marcus and for Phil. “Erik said he needed an extra set of hands.”

“Erik.” Steve’s hands went still.

“What?”

“Even if I set aside everything I’ve read in SHIELD’s files? Genosha is on the other side of the world.” Steve touched his shoulder, where metal met flesh. “I could use another set of eyes myself, if you’re looking for work.”

“Steve.” Oh, they really should have talked about this.

“If you’re still insisting I snore, you can have the other bedroom.” He hated the desperation that had crept into Steve’s voice.

“Steve, I can’t stay here.” James put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You’re Captain America and I’m a killer.”  

“You’re not responsible for what the Winter Soldier did.”

He’d been a killer long before that. If he hadn’t fallen, history would have sanitized everything he’d done during the war. Instead, he’d been found by the Red Room. “What did Natasha tell you?”

“That you were a sniper. And her lover. I don’t care about that.” Steve was apparently still good at sharing. “You don’t have to leave.”

“Did she tell you I killed her parents?” He had never known their names or what they’d done. The Winter Soldier didn’t ask questions like that. “Right in front of her. Then I took her back to the Red Room, and they brainwashed her. Then I taught her how to kill, how to fight. When she was older, they gave her to me as a partner and I taught her how to fuck. We killed a lot of people together.”

If he’d thought that would make Steve hesitate, he’d been wrong. “That wasn’t you.”

“Maybe, but it was my choice. I could have said no.” He squeezed Steve’s shoulder. “I killed a lot of people and SHIELD was involved. Do you know what will happen, if that gets out?”

“I don’t care.” That was the kind of thing most people regretted saying but Steve wasn’t like that. He meant it. “No one cares.”

That might be going a little far. “They don’t care that I’ve murdered hundreds of people?”

“No. They don’t.”

It was possible that was true, at least among the Avengers. Natasha, Clint and the Hulk certainly had body counts. Stark too, in a more indirect way. He would have to try harder. “What if I told you I owed Loki my life?”

“You were here, during the battle?” Steve looked confused, which wasn’t the reaction he was going for but at least it wasn’t another plea to stay.

“No.” Marcus was still playing a game. He hadn’t told Steve anything, either before or after the punch. “Three months ago, the Red Room thawed me for one last mission. I was on the roof, in position to take the shot, when the target tapped me on the soldier. He ripped the control chip out of my brain and he let me go.”

“Loki helped you?” He could tell Steve was looking for a mark, a scar. He’d done the same. There was nothing to find though. “Why?”

“No one knows.”

That got Steve out of bed at least, and talking to thin air.  “JARVIS, can you assemble the others? We need to talk.”

Thin air answered him, in a very proper accent. “Breakfast is being served on the common floor, Captain. Agents Barton and Coulson won’t be joining us until later but the rest of the team is present.”

“Good, good.” Steve looked around the room. “Do you remember what we did with my pants?”

“In the hallway.” He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like a reasonable answer.

“Thanks.” Jesus, he’d forgotten how impressive Steve was completely naked. “Come on down when you’re ready.”

“Steve-“ It was pointless. He was already out of the room, getting dressed.

“Robot breakfast, Bucky. Come downstairs.”

Robot what? He heard the door open and shut, he would have to go downstairs to ask. James let his head fall back against the pillows and reached for his phone. He dialed Erik. Erik still made sense. “What have you been up to while I was asleep? What the hell is the Brotherhood?”

“When I said Charles got the children, I didn’t mean all of them. Some of them left the Mansion with me, when I formed the Brotherhood of Mutants.” Erik sounded perfectly calm and collected although it was probably still the middle of the night where he was. “Is everything all right?”

“My former partner cracked my skull open.” It was healed, the serum’s gift, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t been careless. “Everything is fine.”

“Did they take x-rays? Until the bone heals around the chip, it could be vulnerable to shock.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. When is your plane coming?”

“Mystique has been… delayed.” The way Erik talked, the delay could have been caused by anything from a head cold to an explosion. “I’ll have to send someone else. In the meantime, I was hoping I could put your tactical judgment to good use.”

“Whatever you need.” He owed Erik and there was something satisfying in using what Zolla had given him to help him.

“I need you to attend a meeting.”

Erik gave him an address, a familiar one. It was the Winter Soldier’s last assignment. “This is the Latverian embassy.”

“We had a visitor last night. There was a bit of an altercation before we sorted things out. Fortunately, the house didn’t take any structural damage and Mystique is out of the infirmary. Our guest told me a disturbing story and offered me a seat at this meeting.”

There was a note of anxiety in Erik’s voice. That made James uneasy. “How bad is it?”

“If what I was told is true? Very bad. Find out the truth for me.”

James got dressed in yesterday’s clothes, thinking about what could have a survivor like Erik on edge. Wandering around to get dressed, he found out Steve’s apartment was huge. The spare bedroom Steve had offered him was almost as big as the apartment they’d once shared. He gave a low whistle. “I’d ask who you have to fuck to get an apartment like this, but the answer is sorta obvious.”

He almost jumped out of his skin when the British voice from thin air answered. “Mister Stark has stated numerous times that the idea of engaging in sexual relations with the Captain is ‘creepy.’ All the Avengers were given suites of this size.”

“Are you… Jarvis?” He craned his head, looking for cameras.

“Yes, sir. Captain Rogers would like me to remind you that breakfast is in progress.”

He followed the voice’s directions to the elevator and got out on the common floor. James’ clothes covered up whatever marks Steve had left that hadn’t faded, but he was pretty sure everyone knew what they’d spent the night doing.

There was really a robot making breakfast. James let himself stare at it, but just for a few seconds. Everyone was in the kitchen, eating, like it was completely normal for a robot to be cooking.

Natasha was doing a crossword puzzle, which was really messing with James’ head. Bruce was sitting across from her, eating oatmeal. “Sorry we kidnapped you.”

“It happens.” More to him than normal people, probably. Peggy had snatched him off the street more than once.

Stark was standing next to the blender, drinking some disgusting looking green concoction, forgoing the eggs and potatoes the robot was making. “So, I’ve got to ask about the arm. Did Uncle Erik build that for you?”

“The control chip is his.” Uncle Erik. That was a new one. James took a plate from the cooking bot. The eggs were scrambled and there was cheese melted on top.

Steve gave Tony a look. “You told me Erik Lehnsherr was a dangerous mutant who controlled metal.”

“Uhuh.” Tony slurped from his straw.

“And you call him Uncle Erik.”

“I called Obie Uncle too. Erik never ripped out my heart and left me for dead.”

Yeah, Tony had some pretty low standards. The robot was a good cook though. “I need to know. Everyone just keeps dancing around this. Is Erik a terrorist or something?”

“No. Of course not.” Tony took another slurp of his drink and leaned over Natasha to look at her crossword. “13 down is epoch.” James felt a brief flash of relief but Tony squashed it pretty quickly. “Terrorists are what the winners call the losers. Erik won, so he was a freedom fighter.”

Steve, who had never been great with moral ambiguity, choked on a bit of potato. “That’s not how it works.”

“That’s totally how it works.” Tony patted Steve on the shoulder, and gave him a pitting look. “It’s cool. I still get a birthday card and everything.”

“Stark, stop breaking Steve.” Natasha was using a pen to fill in the answers. “Bruce deserves a medal for putting up with you for over a year.”

“I have one. Pepper had it made.” James wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. He was probably joking. “It’s okay, there’s lot of perks. Like indoor plumbing. And holographic interfaces with near limitless processing power.”

“I can’t believe you’re making that comparison.” Tony abandoned his smoothie when the coffee machine made a burbling noise. “Do you need your own floor? Steve snores.”

“I’m only going to be here a few more days.” The room went dead silent. Even the robot stopped in it’s tracks.

“Why?” Tony seemed to be personally offended that he was leaving. “You can’t tell me wherever SHIELD has you is better than luxury apartments.”

“Because I’m not part of your superhero club?” Was he missing something here? It seemed so obvious to James. “You let a stranger come into your house. I could be fooling all of you, Steve especially. I could be working for Loki, I could still be under the Red Room’s control. Even if you don’t believe any of that, I’m still a murderer.”

“Yeah, okay.” Tony reached out and stole a strawberry from the edge of Bruce’s plate. “Raise your hand if you’re responsible for the deaths of too many innocent people to think about.” Everyone raised a hand, except for Steve. “There, see? If you’re actually worried about having more sleeper programing, I know a guy that can check you out.”

“You’re not a murderer, Bucky.” Of course Steve wouldn’t let that go.

James gave up, and ate his eggs.

Steve pushed a cup of coffee across the table to James. “We were wondering if there was anything else you could tell us about Loki.”

He was maybe a little in love with the coffee machine. “Not much, but he gave me this.” James put the phone on the table. “He gave it to me. SHIELD says it’s just a phone. They cloned it and gave it back to me.”

Tony snatched up the phone and pried off its shiny green case. “Latest model. At least he’s got good taste.” He thumbed through a few pages. “Okay. That’s Doom.”

“Doom?” Steve twitched, just a little. He’d never been good at mornings, especially after the serum, not unless they were being shot at. “What do you mean, doom?”

“I mean Doom. Doctor Doom.” Tony turned the phone around. He’d opened the photo gallery app. “Although if you found him at the Latverian embassy, I’m not sure who else he would be hanging out with. His email is still logged in. He’s debating Norse mythology with some poor grad student, who has no come back for, ‘I was there’ and there’s some Amazon receipts. Honestly, the most incriminating thing in here is a link to the Evil Overlord list, and he’s already flunked item 3.”

“Is there any way to contact Thor?” Natasha held her hand out for the phone and Tony handed it over. “The most alarming thing is how quickly he’s adapted to our technology. He’s following both the Tony Stark and Iron Man hashtags on Twitter. We can assume he’s been tracking your every move since he returned to Earth.”

“If there’s a way to reach Thor, people way more motivated than us would have found it. Doctor Foster, for example.” Bruce winced when Natasha passed him the phone. “I see he’s an active member of several anti-Hulk blogs.”

James sighed into his coffee. “I may be able to get you some information.”

* * *

He spent the day going over all the available information, SHIELD’s reports and raw footage out on the web. Clint’s reports got special attention. It was half confession, half mission report, written in the days between the battle and and when he and Natasha had taken off. They were excruciatingly detailed but James couldn’t shake the feeling they were incomplete.

He didn’t know Thor but his reports felt too personal. Loki was his brother and Thor framed everything he had done in terms of their family problems. Clint’s reports, on the other hand, were clinical. Loki had clearly been tortured, Clint had been very insistent about it. He’d provided detailed sketches of the wound he’d seen beneath Loki’s glamour. A lot of them were in places that clothing would hide with no explanation of how Clint had seen them.

The whole Battle for New York felt off. Why had Loki wanted Earth? Why had he brought his army onto the Avengers home turf? It was possible Loki was beyond his understanding, which just pissed James off. He had a tactical mind and he’d been a monster. If anyone was capable of understanding Loki, it was him.  

“Sergeant,” James jumped in his seat when JARVIS talked, he couldn’t help it. “You asked to be informed when Agent Barton arrived.”

James checked the clock and found it was past six. “What’s he up to?”

“He and Agent Coulson are moving in, sir, although it appears dinner is on the agenda before unpacking. You are also strongly encouraged to attend.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” James made bad decisions about Steve, it had always been his weak spot. “Steve will just try and get me to stay and the rest of them will help him.”

There was a pause and then the invisible man agreed with him. “There is a significant probability that Sir’s housemates will question your desire to leave.”

James let his head rest of the desk. He felt tired down to his bones, like he’d spent the past three months running. He couldn’t stop here, he had to keep going. He reached for a tablet and turned it on, trying to will himself to get back to work. It didn’t work but after a few minutes a plate was set down in his field of vision.

Clint dropped into the chair beside the desk. “Eat, then come help me test out Stark’s new shooting range.”

James sat up and pulled the fork out of the steak on the plate. “Did Steve send you?”

“No.”  Barton had his own plate, with a giant pile of mashed potatoes. “I want to eat my mashed potatoes and then go shoot things. If you’re not up for that, I can ask Natasha.”

“I’m up for it.”

Even though Clint claimed he wasn’t at his best with his gun, they were pretty much evenly matched, which was pretty amazing considering Clint was vanilla human. Clint didn’t ask him stupid questions about why he was leaving, they just shot every sniper rifle in the armory. Afterwards, when they were cleaning the weapons, Clint finally asked, “I have to know. How did you find us?”

“One of your neighbors was writing a vacation blog. A Russian mail order bride and a recently discharged army sniper? She had all kinds of theories about you two.” James gave him a smirk. “I really liked the one where you were a genetically engineered super soldier and she was your doctor who fell in love with you and helped you escape.”

Clint just shook his head and grabbed a cleaning rag for his rifle. “She did seem a little too curious.”

He didn’t want to ask, because he got the impression Clint was mainly held together with scotch tape and stubbornness, but he had to. “Barton, I’ve been reading your report.” Clint’s hands kept moving on autopilot but James could see him tense up, all the calm of their shooting spree melted away. “You warned him that pushing the Avengers too hard could unite them against him. He did it anyway.”

Clint set the gun down and rested his palms against the table. He stared at the gun like it had all the answers. “The first night, he called me into his room, told me to strip naked and climb into bed with him. He put his arms around me, stroked my hair and asked me the best way to win. I told him we should go to North Korea, that if he made their Supreme Leader part of the family the whole country would follow him without question. I told him we should build the portal generator there and bring his Master’s army through as quietly and quickly as we could then march on Beijing. The chances of China accepting help right away were almost zero and SHIELD wouldn’t be able to bring in the Avengers. Once that was in motion, I recommended he and I lead a strike force into Odin’s vault. We would take the Casket of Winter and anything else Loki thought would be useful. Then he thanked me and went to sleep. I was…”  Clint trailed off. None of that had made it into the report and James could see why. It was a brilliant plan and it would have been devastating.

“Did it happen again?”

“The next morning, he told me we were going to attack New York. Every night he would call me into his room for another round of questions and cuddling.” Barton was pale and seemed far away but James didn’t want to touch him to shake him out of it. “I would lie awake at night, wondering where I was going wrong, why he didn’t want me, why he wouldn’t take my advice. I can’t…”

Fuck. James went to the little fridge in one of the corners and found it full of liquor. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and brought it back to the table. “Drink this. You look like you’re ready to drop.”

“I’m okay.” He took the bottle. His hands were rock steady, that was the scary part, and he took a few long drinks before he set the bottle down and took a shaky breath. “I’ve been tortured before. It’s hard to come back from but it was nothing like this. I would say you couldn’t understand, but here I am, in a skyscraper full of superheroes with the only people in the world who know what it’s like.”

James picked up the bottle and took a few sips himself. “You want to shoot some more things? You can show me what you can really do with that bow.”

“Yes, please.” Clint got out his bow and they spent another hour on the range.

* * *

When James took the elevator back up to Steve’s apartment, he hesitated at the door to Steve’s bedroom. Nothing helpful was going to happen if he went in there and crawled into bed with Steve. He wasn’t staying, he wasn’t going to let the things he’d done bring Steve down. Still, it was Steve and James was only human. He pushed the door open but the bed was empty. It was probably for the best. He went to the spare bedroom instead.

The curtains were open and there was moonlight coming in through the window. Steve was asleep, naked, on top of the covers and that was it, James was thinking about this tonight. He stripped down and climbed into bed. “Steve? You want to get under the covers?”

Steve didn’t open his eyes but he gave a sleepy smile in James’ general direction.  “I’m good.” Steve wasn’t in the middle of the bed, he was sleeping on the left side, like they’d done for years but when James got into bed he shifted closer, like they were still in that freezing apartment in Brooklyn.

He was starting to drift off when Steve spoke. “I meant to die.”

James had the sudden urge to vomit. “Steve, you don’t mean that.”

“I do. I meant to die. I told them it was a distraction, so they could set up their ziplines, but I thought I would die. I had it all planned. I would die storming the compound or Red Skull would execute me. When I put that plane in the ocean I thought, this is better. I could die saving everyone and then it would be over, but I didn’t die. I woke up here and you were still dead.” Steve’s fingers curled around his cybernetic arm. “But you weren’t dead and no one told me. You’ve spent most of your life protecting me but you don’t have to do it anymore. You don’t have to join the Avengers or work for SHIELD, you don’t have to live in this madhouse. Just stay with me.”

He had never, in the years they’d had together, ever imagined getting to keep Steve, not even when Peggy had agreed to play along. He still couldn’t. The Winter Soldier hadn’t left any witnesses but some of the people he worked for were still alive. Steve had always been his priority and Steve was Captain America. Captain America couldn’t be in love with a killer.

There was nothing to say so he pressed his mouth to Steve’s.


	8. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was as if someone had looked under every rock and pulled the bigger monsters out of their holes for a meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I've started a new job and it's hard to find time to write. This is a short one but we're coming down to the end.

The conference room looked like any other conference room James had ever seen. It was the attendees that didn’t fit the bland background.   It was as if someone had looked under every rock and pulled the bigger monsters out of their holes for a meeting.

Some of the attendants had been part of his crash course in the 21st century. The big guy in the nice suit whose every gesture screamed organized crime had to be the Kingpin and the twitchy kid sitting next to him was Harry Osborne. There were more than a few people who reminded him of his keepers at the Red Room, mad science types who were talking about explosives. The door opened and a stunning woman in white joined them at the table. The Hellfire Club had sent Emma Frost.

He didn’t know all the faces, but if you were gathering up the powerful and dangerous, this room was a good representation. There were only two exceptions. The first was seated to the right of the empty chair at the head of the table. He was wearing normal clothes, pants and a polo shirt but it was Thor, it couldn’t be anyone else.

The second was a little boy, playing quietly in a corner building a tower with blocks. Everyone was very carefully not paying any attention to him, although Thor was giving him the occasional glance.

James took a seat next to the woman who set off the least red flags. She looked bored, more interested in her cellphone than the people around her. When he sat, she did give him a once over. He hadn’t worn gloves, so the bare metal of his cybernetic hand was exposed, Erik’s suggestion. “Are those cybernetics? Who did them?”

“I don’t remember.” Maybe he should have lied. It had always driven Erik and Howard crazy, how the Soviets had gotten something so advanced.

“Too bad.” She slid her thumb across the screen of her phone and checked the time. “Looks like Bad Horse is running late.”

He thought about the recording function on his phone and switched it on. Erik might want to hear it all later. He was about to ask her about the Bad Horse comment when the doors opened. Their hosts had arrived, Loki striding towards the head of the table with Victor Von Doom at his heels. Thor looked like he was playing dress up in business casual but Loki looked normal, Loki blended in.

He sat at the head of the table and took in the people sitting around it. “Thank you for coming.” There was a projector sitting in the middle of the table and Loki uncapped it. “Doctor Foster, are you with us?”

Jane Foster had found Thor after all. The way she was dressed, in what looked like silk with her hair pulled into a tight braid, James was willing to bet she was in Asgard. “I’m here. Thank you for coming everyone.” She took a sip from a goblet, and James was sure it wasn’t water. “For those of you that don’t know, I’m an astrophysicist and two years ago I hit Thor with my van.”

People laughed but James didn’t think she was making a joke. Someone had made her up, put color on her cheeks and covered her dark circles but she was running on empty. “It was our first confirmed contact with aliens but not the last. Darcy, can you roll the video?” Jane dissolved into footage from the Battle for New York. “The devastation in New York was in the tens of millions and believe me when I tell you we got lucky. I can’t tell you where Tony Stark got the bomb,” Somehow, she had gotten Tony’s helmet cam footage of the Chitauri fleet. “But if he hadn’t blown the fleet, that is what was coming for us.”

The video ended and Jane came back on screen. “I am sitting here, helping the man that did that to us. It wasn’t an easy decision and it’s one all of you are going to have to make. Loki, will you show them what you showed me?”

Loki rose from his chair and started opening up his shirt. The buttons were fake, the shirt was done up with snaps. Loki had been tortured, James had known that coming in, but no one else had. The gashes and burns on Clint’s diagrams had healed to puckered scars and some of the flesh was mottled, new skin mixed with old. It was the way someone with an advanced healing factor looked after they’d been flayed.

“I would have done anything necessary, to survive. I expect any of you would have done the same, to a planet of strangers, to save your own life.” There was something wrong with his hands. At a bare minimum, they were numb. “He would have sought you out eventually, after he had laid waste to the great kingdoms of the Nine Realms. He is merely arriving early. For that and that alone, I apologize.”

It was a nice speech but James thought everyone was too busy staring at the roadmap to breaking a god to be paying much attention. Doom reared up in his chair, suddenly furious. “Loki, put your shirt back on before these fools flee from the sight of your suffering. Doctor Foster, go on.”

The Chitauri fleet was back on the screen. The angle was different, somehow, and it was a still picture. The room seemed to come alive again, at least a little bit. There were low murmurs of conversation and the woman let out a low whistle as she took in the magnitude of the fleet. “We dodged a bullet there.”

“This photo shows a fleet approximately 600 light years from Earth.” The chatter died out immediately. The woman started texting again, very fast.

The Osbourne kid looked a little green. “Doctor Foster, are you saying there’s more of them?”

“I’m saying the fleet Tony Stark blew up was the vanguard. The bulk of the alien army is intact and they’re on their way.” No wonder she looked tired. James wondered how long she’d known about this, how long she’d been in Asgard, how long she’d known her home was doomed. “Their intention is to conquer Earth and use it as a foothold to the rest of the worlds connected by the Bifrost.”

The image on the screen shifted again, this time to Google Maps. It was a global map, dotted with red pins. “These dots represent every mutant, metahuman and vigilante who consider themselves on of the Good Guys, from the Avengers down to the girl who can talk to squirrels.” Out of the corner of his eye, James saw Doom twitch. “Everyone agrees, it’s not enough. Even with help from Asgard, it’s just not winnable. Earth will fall and we’ll give Thanos a foothold to attack the rest of our galaxy.”

In the silence that followed Jane’s explanation, Loki finished fumbling the snaps of his shirt closed. “And that brings me to the reason we invited all of you here.” The number of  pins on the map doubled but these pins were blue. “The groups represented in this room have significant resources and extensive infrastructure. I am giving you an opportunity to save your world and it will be your only opportunity. You cannot seduce Thanos or subvert him. You cannot negotiate with him for your people’s lives or even your own. He doesn’t lust for flesh or wealth or even the glory of victory. The only thing Thanos loves is death and it is a gift he plans on bestowing to everyone on this planet.”

Frost was the first one to find her voice. “Victor, how long have you known about this?”

“Two months after the Battle for New York, Odin appeared in my solar. Latveria has been preparing for war since that day. We are committed.” Doom’s face was a literal mask but his body language was expressive enough if you were well trained. Doom was desperate. “My people made an independent study of the data. We had no choice but to concur with Asgard. Unless we present a united front, there is no way to win. We’ve put together the data for you on a server.”

There were tablets on the table for people to access the data. James flipped through the documents quickly, trying to wrap his head around the scale of this. Starting right around the time, Doom had dropped off the radar. Reed Richards had reached out to SHIELD, concerned that Doom was planning something big while SHIELD and the rest of the New York crew was distracted. The emails had gotten increasingly plaintive as the months went by. James had read them all, preparing for this meeting. Reed had been right but James didn’t think this was what he’d had in mind.

“RAID is at your disposal.” One of the science types had found his tongue and he looked like it was Christmas. “I’ll call a meeting when I get home and get you a list of all the pet projects we have going on with significant destructive potential.”

Loki raised a hand to stop him. “If you agree to work with us and we find you are colluding with the enemy in a futile attempt to save your own life, I will end you. Be clear, the survival of this part of the galaxy is at stake. All your petty quarrels must be put aside until the battle is won.”

Emma Frost shoved her chair back and the sound of it scraping against the floor silenced the room. “How long do we have?”

“Six months, by our best estimates.” Doom didn’t sound afraid. Maybe he was immune to her mutation, maybe living with this for over a year had burned all his fear away.

“What on Earth were you waiting for?” Her anger was a physical force, he could feel it rolling off her.

“Proof. We were only able to get that image a week ago, when the fleet entered the far edge of Heimdall’s gaze. Or would you have taken me at my word, Lady Frost?” Loki smiled at her.

“No.” She looked at each person sitting at the table then took a card from her bag and slid it across the table to Doom. “We’ll be in touch.”

When she swept out of the room, the meeting started to break up but James stayed in his seat. He’d come here for Erik, with no real expectations. He’d been planning on using whatever crazy scheme Loki shared to gauge Erik’s reaction, see what kind of man he’d become. Instead, he’d found the bad guys plotting to save the world.

James bit back a hysterical laugh. He was staying, he had to stay. Erik would need him here. He’d walked in here convinced there was nothing he could do to wipe the red off his ledger but apparently he’d been thinking too small. Against an outside threat like Thanos, what were a few hundred executions duly authorized by the Soviet government? There would still be hell to pay but it would be about who they were, not what he’d done. Steve would probably get a kick out of it, he hated bullies. If James saved the whole world, who could say anything about his past?

The woman snapped the keyboard of her phone shut. “Do you have some kind of apocalypse fetish?”

“No, but killing is something I understand.” He flexed the fingers of his cybernetic hand. “I’m good at it.”

“I’m sure you are.” The woman gave his arm a pat that was closer to a grope and gathered up her things. “We’re in. My superiors will be in touch.”

James was sure he was smiling like a maniac because Thor was looking a bit disturbed. “Do you find this amusing? Do you value your existence so little?”

“No, not at all.” Right now, James desperately wanted to live to see the future. Maybe he was finally cracking up but right now he felt the best he had since he’d woken up. “It’s just that your brother was right. It’s hilarious.”

“It’s better than you know.” Loki gestured to a servant who brought him a carafe of coffee. “The woman sitting next to you was here representing Hydra.”

The thought of working with HYDRA made his skin crawl but what choice did they have? They needed everyone’s help if anyone was going to get out of this alive. “You enjoying yourself, Loki?”

“I am. I am a prince of Asgard and everything I did before my fall I did for my people.” Loki looked to Thor. “Almost everything. Nearly killing you was for me. I could have ended generations of conflict and bloodied only my own hands.” Loki tugged off his gloves and picked up a delicate cup. “Instead, my brother destroyed the Bifrost and sparked the whole realm into rebellion. When we needed to be at our strongest, he weakened us.”

“You were committing genocide, Loki.” Loki’s fingers had the same mottling of new and old skin, which explained the numbness, and Thor was looking anywhere but at his brother’s hands. The rest of the room had been horrified but it was something else with Thor.

“Why help us? Why not let Earth fall and destroy us along with your enemy?” If a Bifrost attack could destroy Jotunheim, why not use it against a fallen Earth? “You seemed all for destroying us last year.”

“You misunderstand me.” Loki set the cup down, his numb fingers letting go to let it clatter on the table. “There is something on this planet that is precious to me. I could never let it be destroyed.”

Doom put his hand on Loki’s should. “I told you, I’ll take care of it.” They were friends, not allies. That was going to make Doom dangerous in the long run.

“Thank you, Victor.” Loki smiled and leaned down the table towards James. “Besides, I never intended to win. If your complete annihilation had been my objective, I needed only to follow Hawkeye’s advice. Did he tell you how very helpful he tried to be?”

“Yes.” That seemed to surprise Loki. Good. “Clint told me everything. I still don’t understand. What would have happened if the Avengers failed? Everyone agrees, they barely got their act together in time.”

“Why do you think I killed Agent Coulson?” Loki looked at the map, still projected onto the screen. “A sacrifice was necessary. The Hawk and Widow loved him, my brother considered him a friend and Iron Man respected him. All your Captain needed was an excuse to be heroic. I will admit I underestimated Doctor Banner and was unprepared for the Hulk.”

“You didn’t kill Agent Coulson.” He’d had two theories but James tossed the one that involved Loki intentionally missing the heart out. “You have shitty aim.”

“The wound was mortal.” Thor had considered Phil a friend and they’d let him go back to Asgard thinking he was dead. Marcus was an asshole. “I saw it happen. Loki’s blade struck true. No man could survive such a wound.”

“Phil Coulson did. I saw him this morning. He was eating pancakes.” And grumbling about having to move into Stark’s Tower/Home for Wayward Super Heroes.

“Truly, you have seen him?” Thor sounded rattled and unsure. James didn’t blame him considering who else had participated in this little sit-down.

“I can take you to him.” It was a good idea anyway. Even with the proof Doom had offered him, this was going to be a hard sell. “Just let me make a phone call.”

* * *

It was pouring when he stepped outside. He stood under the awning and slid his phone out. “Whatever you imagined, it’s worse.”

“I doubt that.” Erik had lived through hell once already and James was sure he had a good grasp on the human capacity for evil but this was different.

“There’s an alien fleet on it’s way. Their general plan seems to involve killing us all.”

There was a long moment of silence, long enough that James worried his phone had dropped the call, before Erik spoke again. “And Loki has a plan?”

“I don’t think it’s him.” There was a mind very much like James’ behind the plans he’d been shown, a human mind, someone who’d been willing to go to any length to win a no-win scenario, even if it meant working with the scum of the Earth. “Erik, do you have an army?” There was that silence again. “Please tell me you have an army. We’re going to need one.”

“Yes, I have an army. We took this place by force from it’s previous government.” There was that thin line between terrorist and freedom fighter again.

“Good.” He would need to go over the plans with a fine toothed comb, compare them to Erik’s force estimates. “I think we’re going to have to rethink that security gig you offered me. I’m going to send you audio of the meeting and a link to Doom’s server.” He loved his shiny green phone. It did so many things. “I need to talk to Steve.”

“I wish you luck with him, James.” Erik sounded sincere and James wondered, not for the first time, what had gone wrong between him and Charles. “I’ll review the data and we’ll speak tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to anyone who knows why the kid playing blocks is there. 
> 
> This scene takes place in early September, 2013.


	9. The Hard Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deciding to stay was the easy part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, obviously, this isn't the end of the story but it is the end of Bucky's part. I've been staring at this fic for so long I actually wrote 'A Quiet War' in it's entirety while procrastinating on it. I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> I still need to tell the story of how Steve and Buck hooked up (Bucky's an unreliable narrator) and the so-nerdy-my-husband-is-helping story about Jane's cousin Kenny. 
> 
> Thanks for everyone who hung in there while I finished this beast.

He took Thor to the common area first. Only Clint and Phil were there and only Phil was awake. Clint was apparently napping in self defense against Phil’s terrible tv choices.  “Look who I found.”

Clint and Phil had been curled up together on the couch and Phil made an unsuccessful attempt to get up to say hello . “Thor. Welcome back to Earth.”

“Son of Coul.” Thor was frozen in the doorway, an immovable object if James had ever seen one. Whether he’d thought James was lying or not, he looked shocked. “How is this possible?”

“Your brother had bad aim.” On his second attempt, Phil managed to wiggle free from Clint. “I coded but the doctors brought me back.”

“I am relieved then, to see you so well.” When Phil came into arm’s reach, Thor grabbed him into a hug but his eyes were fixed on Clint’s sleeping form.

Something was very wrong here. “Everything okay, Thor?”

“Of course. I am grateful my friend has returned to us.” Thor was a terrible liar and something was very wrong.

* * *

Steve’s apartment was all windows and none of them had curtains. Steve had muttered something about one way glass the first night but they’d been distracted so he’d let it go. The windows let in the grey light of a rainy afternoon and gave a good view of the pounding rain. It was almost fall.

Steve wasn’t here either but James was pretty sure he was still welcome so he went into Steve’s bedroom. He threw his wet jacket onto a chair and started pulling off his boots. He’d told Clint and Phil they’d needed to talk and had the voice in the ceiling arrange a meeting before dinner. In the meantime, all he had was time to think.

When you looked at Steve Rogers now, it was easy to love him. A big guy with an attitude like Steve’s, a lot of people went for that, but James had loved him before the shiny new wrapper, had loved him when every winter seemed like it might be his last. When Steve had reached for him in the middle of the night the first time, he’d already been so far gone for the guy it was pathetic. He’d never told Steve that, had kept his mouth shut for the first year until he couldn’t stand it anymore. After a year, ‘I love you’ sounded less ridiculous, especially when you were nineteen and getting off together every night.  

The front door of the apartment opened with a rattle and he could hear Stark hiss, “Shhh.”

There was a deep, rumbling reply and heavy footsteps came towards the bedroom. “Thanks, big guy.” Tony pushed open the bedroom door. “Just dump him on the bed and I’ll…”

The Hulk was standing behind Tony, Steve asleep in his arms. The Hulk growled when he saw James and wow, that was as terrifying as James had imagined it would be. He took a step back, involuntarily, as the Hulk came forward to deposit Steve on the bed. “Is he okay?”

That was the wrong question. The Hulk bent his head down so it was even with James’ and bared his teeth. Tony grabbed him by the arm. “Whoa, whoa. Remember you promised Steve, no smashing.”

The Hulk was huge, he was dangerous and James had no idea what he’d done to piss him off. It seemed like a bad idea to ask any more questions. Tony patted at the Hulk’s big green bicep. “Go down to the TV room, okay? JARVIS will put on Myth Busters for you.”

The Hulk growled one last time, just inches from James’ face, then lumbered out of the room. James wasn’t scared of many things but, “So, that was terrifying. Is Steve *drunk*?” He had that same loose limbed quality the few times James had gotten him drunk before but that wasn’t supposed to be possible anymore, not with the serum.

“There was science.” Tony tugged at the laces of Steve’s sneakers and pulled them off. “Today has been a day of revelations. The Hulk, as far as I can tell, he’s not real chatty, thinks of Steve as his big brother. That makes you the jerk who is breaking his brother’s heart.”

Tony managed to get Steve to roll over onto his side after a few good shoves, and stuck a pillow at his back to keep him from rolling over. “Do you know what I did today, Barnes? I helped my childhood hero get really drunk. It took a lot of effort and involved inserting an IV line, which meant getting Bruce to help. Then, Steve insisted someone had to drink with him. I am capable of a lot of things but keeping up with two superhuman metabolisms isn’t on the list.”

Tony grabbed a blanket from the end of the bed and laid it over Steve. “So I got to be sober while Steve told us all about how you used to take care of him when he was sick, how he seduced you, how he found you in that Hydra base and how you went and died on him, but not once did he mention you were an asshole.”

Tony’s profile called him possessive. James hadn’t really understood what it meant, until now. “I’m staying, if he still wants that.”

That stopped whatever rant Tony had been about to launch. “What happened to your whole ‘I’m a murderer, we can’t be together’ bullshit?”

“Steve’s got bigger problems than my sketchy past.” James tossed Tony his phone. “Thor’s downstairs, he can back up what’s on there. It’s all bad news.”

“I’m going to need you to quantify bad. On a scale of one to ten, with the Battle for New York being a nine-”

“An eleven.” James cut Tony off, suddenly exhausted. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and he had hours of reading to do before he called Erik. “It’s bad, alright? Bad enough that it doesn’t matter what I’ve done, so I’m staying.” If Steve would let him, he’d stay forever. “Let me get Steve sobered up and we’ll talk.”

When Tony left, James climbed into bed with Steve. What he really needed was a few hours sleep but laying here for a few minutes with Steve would be almost as good. He stretched out so they were eye to eye. “Steve?”

“Bucky.” A heavy arm fell across his hips and dragged him in closer.

“Sobering up yet?” Steve’s metabolism was twice as fast as James’, he had to be getting there.

“Working on it.” Steve reached for the button on James’ pants.

“Hold up, Steve.” He didn’t want to stop him but he’d pulled the same thing this morning when James had been sleepy and completely without willpower. “Can we talk for a minute, first?”

Steve drew his hand back and the buzzed smile faded away. “Maybe I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I’m not your CO anymore, you don’t have to justify yourself to me but if you’re going to crawl into bed with me the rules haven’t changed.”

He meant to say something about the end of the world but what came out was, “I love you.” Steve looked a bit more stunned by that than James felt comfortable with. “Steve, you knew that.”

“That was a long time ago.” Steve rolled away from him and sat up on the edge of the bed. “We were, in a pretty literal sense, other people then.”

“Come back here.” He’d made a worse mess of this than he’d realized. He caught Steve by the wrist, using the cybernetic hand. “If you thought I didn’t love you anymore, what the hell have you been doing the past few days? Did you think if you just kept me distracted enough I would forget to leave?”

“In my defense, it worked the first time around.” Steve couldn’t look small, not anymore, but he was hunched in on himself.

“Steve.” James touched the small of Steve’s back. The muscles were stiff and Steve didn’t lean into the touch. “I just thought you would want to know I’m staying in New York. Here, if I’m still welcome.”

Steve finally looked back, the same suspicious look he’d given James their entire lives. “What happened today? Where have you been?”

“In a meeting.” He drew Steve back down onto the mattress and kissed him, because he had to. “You’ve got bigger problems than me, I hate to tell you.”

* * *

In the days leading up to the meeting, James had given himself a crash course in Victor Von Doom. He hadn’t been able to understand Loki but he’d had hopes that his long friendship with Erik would help him understand Doom, his country and his diplomatic immunity.

The basic gist of it seemed to be that Doom, like Erik, was loved by his people. He’d taken control of Latveria when it was a post-Soviet hellhole barely able to feed itself. Today, it’s people were among the world’s best educated and a global leader in robotics.

As far as the supervillain thing went, most of the world seemed to think it was a joke. Doom’s attempts on Reed Richard’s life were so over the top cartoonish that the only people who reported on them with a straight face was the Daily Show. To most of the world, Doom was a charismatic, eccentric but relatively benign dictator who hid his disfigurement out of vanity. The more Richards ranted to the contrary, the less people cared if it was true.

Just as Loki said -Why do you think I killed Agent Coulson?- Tony paused the video. “It was sort of formulaic, wasn’t it? The villain made too many mistakes, the heroes rallied and beat overwhelming odds. It gave me nightmares for months, the randomness of it all. I built suits like a crazy person, trying to plan for whatever was coming next.”

“Clint.” Steve’s voice was gentle but Clint tensed up anyway. “Did you know?”

“No.” Clint was sitting ramrod straight in his chair and his fingertips were digging into Phil’s thigh. Compared to the other guy Loki had taken, Clint was a model of recovery but he still hadn’t reacted so well to seeing the video. “He didn’t trust any of us, not completely. I would have said something.” No one but James knew what Clint had offered Loki and James wasn’t going to say anything. This was different.  “Thor, please tell us he’s lying.”

“No.” In the months it had taken James to find Clint, he’d spent a lot of time with Phil. Phil had described Thor as an especially enthusiastic golden retriever but the past year had changed him. “Jane and I made the journey to the far edge of the Bifrost’s reach. We witnessed the fleet with our own eyes.”

“You should have told us.” Phil was absently rubbing circles on Clint’s wrist. “Six months isn’t enough time.”

“What proof could we have offered you? My brother’s oath? My mother’s magic?” Thor had Mjolnir in his lap, cradling it like a child might hold a toy. “Would SHIELD have done for us what Lord Doom has, on nothing but a traitor’s word?”

“No.” Phil was honest, at least. Latveria was ready for war, ready to arm her allies. “If you’d come back five minutes after you left, the World Security Council would still be arguing about this. But Fury-”

Thor slammed a hand against the table. “Why should we have handed the fate of the universe to Fury, when he has already proven himself a liar? Your organization was willing to kill millions, pointlessly.”

“I agree that the missile was a terrible mistake but-”

“Thor’s right.” Bruce had been quiet until now, reading but Phil stopped talking when he spoke up. “I agree with Doctor Foster’s findings. Detonating that bomb would have done nothing to the portal and the conventional explosion would have had minimal effects on the Chitauri. Their biology is so different than ours I can’t say what the radiation would have done to them, but I can tell you what it would have done to the people of New York. Launching that missile wasn’t rational, it was desperate and it almost killed Tony.”

“Doctor Banner-” Phil tried again but Bruce just plowed on.

“You weren’t here, Agent. None of you were.” Bruce was icily calm as he spoke and James wondered, not for the first time, what it took to control the Hulk. “I was. I was the one who Pepper called crying when she thought Tony was dead and I’m the one who helped Tony rewrite her genetic code when we thought she might burn to death in her sleep. SHIELD was unreachable the whole time, no one would take my phone calls, not even when the Mandarin almost killed the President. We’re all glad you’re alive, Agent Coulson, but all SHIELD and the World Security Council have done is show me they can’t be trusted.”

The room got quiet again and James let it settle, let it get uncomfortable. Bruce’s anger was understandable, it was how he kept control but Thor’s anger didn’t make sense. There was something else going on here. “Thor, who designed this battle campaign? It wasn’t your brother.”

“The greatest military minds of Asgard sat in council for months and in the end deemed the battle unwinnable. It was suggested we do nothing, reserve our strength and destroy your world when it fell.” Of all of them, Thor seemed the most comfortable with James which was another thing that didn’t make sense. “Jane wouldn’t hear it. She shouted in my father’s face, demanding we think of something else. Jane is a brave woman, my father can be a harsh man, but he simply told her if she had some great strategist hidden away, she need only tell us and he would send me to fetch him. Her kinsman has been a great help to us.”

Natasha had never been a soldier, she had always been more personal with her kills, but she had focused in on the casualty projections. “Are these right?”

The best estimates put the casualties for the defenders at twenty percent. “I would call them pretty optimistic, actually.”

“JARVIS, re-run these simulations. Let’s see if we can do any better.” Tony Stark hated to lose. In that way, at least, he was like Howard. “No offense to your guy, Thor, but if we’re crawling into bed with the Evil League of Evil, we need to be sure.”

* * *

Marcus turned up the next morning at breakfast and sat at the kitchen table eating eggs while Steve and Tony took turns monologuing at him with occasionally interjections by the rest of the team.  James, who had heard Steve’s side of this rant before he’d started a ten hour phone call to Erik, Erik’s friend Mystique and Mystique’s friends the dangerous killing machines, tuned it all out and tried to sweet talk the coffee machine into brewing something that would work on his metabolism.

When Tony stopped for breath, Marcus picked up a piece of bacon and snapped it in half. “Barton, do you have anything to contribute?”

“Were you going to tell me, sir?” Clint jammed his fork into the wooden table top and it stood on it’s own, quivering. “Actually, *what* were you going to tell me? You lied, and I get it. Stark and Rogers, they needed to get their shit together but you came to me afterwards, when my husband was lying in a hospital bed, in a coma, and told me he was dead.”

Marcus ate half the bacon strip. “I would have taken you to his hospital room and left you there. You’re very focused, Barton. After a few days, you wouldn’t have remembered to be mad at me.”

“Well, that’s not what happened.” Natasha was eating an apple in a very threatening way, cutting pieces out of it with a paring knife. The knife didn’t match anything in the kitchen which meant she’d been carrying it in her pajamas. James had maybe done a little too well training her to always be on guard. “I don’t think we’ll be coming back to SHIELD, sir.”

“That’s probably for the best, Miss Romanoff.” Marcus grabbed a peice of toast and stood. “Alright, Phil, pack it up. Your bus is ready.”

“Pack it up?” Phil gave Marcus a puzzled look, orange juice glass halfway to his mouth. “Sir, you and I both know the bus was just a distraction to keep me from going off the ranch to find Clint. The Avengers-”

“Are a team. Look at them, Phil.” Marcus looked too damn pleased with himself. “Admittedly, they’re a team that wants to kill me, but they’d be doing it together. When we planned this out, we assumed they’d be at each other’s throats constantly, that they’d need a babysitter. They don’t.”

“Sir. Please don’t ask me to do this.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Pack up your things.” Marcus took a phone from his inside jacket pocket and skidded it across the table. A youtube video started playing, of a man jumping out of a building and landing with enough force to crack the asphalt, apparently unharmed. “Xavier says he’s not a mutant. That means he’s ours.We need to move on this.”

The video was frozen on a frame of the man holding the woman he’d saved standing in the wreckage of the street, looking like a frame from a comic book. James had to hand it to Marcus, this was candy to someone like Phil.

Clint shoved the phone back at Marcus. “He died for you and you want more? What the hell do you have on him? Did you help him hid a body once?”

“Agent Coulson.” Fury’s smirk was gone. “We were told last night that an alien fleet is on it’s way. The situation is so dire that this afternoon, I have a meeting with Wade Wilson. You will meet with Agent Grant and convince him to cut out the lone wolf bullshit. You will meet with Agent May and get her back in the field. You will be issued a science team. You will get on a plane and you will bring this man, whoever he is, into the fold because we are at war and we need every soldier we can get our hands on.”

“You son of a bitch.” Clint yanked the fork free from the table top and dropped it onto his plate. “Come on, I’ll help you pack.”

“Wait, wait.” Tony grabbed onto the sleeve of Phil’s suit jacket. “You’re not really leaving, are you? Screw SHIELD, if you need a paycheck that badly we’ll talk to Pepper.”

Phil looked tired, the way he had at the beginning of summer when James had first gotten to New York. “The Director and I have known each other a long time. He knows I can’t say no, not to this.”

* * *

James got Steve’s spare room after all, as an office. “I feel like all I do is have meetings. This isn’t how I was expecting this to go.” Today’s meeting was with Asgard, which involved installing some kind of holographic generator and a new outlet for it to get enough juice.

“Are you really calling another planet from this thing?” Steve ran a finger across the smooth top of the table.

“That’s what they tell me.” Thor had given him a smooth stone, covered in shifting runes. Tony had examined it, read a note from Jane and declared it to be a VPN token. James wasn’t sure what that meant, but Jane had given instructions. “Come running with me tonight? I’m going stir crazy.”

“You say that now but when I come in here you’ll be too busy to leave.” It was true, James had fallen asleep in here more than once in the past week. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Not for this one.” The plans were cold, calculated, the kind of shades-of-grey bullshit that keep men like Steve up at night. James wanted to get a feel for the man that had written them, before he let him meet Steve. James dropped the stone onto the table and it flared to life. “Seriously, Steve. Drag me out of here, if you have to.”

Steve gave him the smile that always used to lead to the two of them running for their lives. “If you say so, Bucky. I”ll see you later.”

The screen resolved into the image of a man. He wasn’t what James had expected, not at all. He was young, early twenties probably and more absent minded professor than hardened warrior. “Hello? This is Ken Foster.”

“This is James Barnes.”

“Barnes, Barnes.” The man flipped through a giant leather bound book and stared blearily at the pages. “Sorry, I’ve been at this for hours. The Aesir need a lot less sleep than baseline humans.” He must have found what he was looking for because he got quiet for a minute. When he looked up, the mild-manneredness was gone. In it’s place was a keen interest. “James Barnes. Code name: Winter Soldier. Super soldier variant, cybernetically enhanced, assassin. You weren’t in the original campaign. Can you brief me on your capabilities?”

* * *

September evaporated into a endless series of meetings, broken up by training sessions.

The Avengers were recruiting, quietly. The Falcon came to stay and a woman Tony knew from boarding school who called herself Wasp. Phil would turn up occasionally, some wayward metahuman with a suitcase in tow. He would deposit them with Bruce, disappear into Clint’s suite for the night and be gone by morning.

The night he’d brought the fire starter, James stayed up all night talking to Erik. The people SHIELD were collecting weren’t mutants, they didn’t have the X-gene, but James didn’t have anyone else who could help him figure out what they were capable of. He didn’t make it to bed, again.

The next morning, a hand touched his shoulder. It wasn’t Steve’s hand and James was free of the Winter Soldier, but not his instincts. His gun was in his hand before he was even awake and the hand pulled back in an instant. “Thor. That was stupid.”

“Aye, I see that now.” Thor stood very still while James put the gun away. “My apologies. I wished to speak to you before the others woke.”

Was it morning? “JARVIS, time.”

“It is five am, sir. The Captain attempted to retrieve you several times but gave up several hours ago. I am to remind you that you have dinner plans tonight and that the consequences are dire for not attending.”

“Right.” Steve was still sorta pissed at him for trying to leave. The not making it to bed half the time wasn’t helping. “Thor, we are meeting with Foster in two hours. Can’t it wait?”

“It’s not strategy I wish to discuss.” Thor held out a styrofoam coffee cup. “The Captain tells me you are his long-time companion and that you give good advice. I am in need of good advice and there is no one else I can speak to about this.”

James took the coffee and took a sip while he considered Thor. He’d flat out refused to work with SHIELD and when Phil stopped by he was conspicuously absent. “What do you need?”

Thor sat in one of the rolling chairs and picked up the hologram stone, passing it from hand to hand. “Before I returned to Asgard, I spoke to Hawkeye. My brother injured him grievously and I wanted to make reparations. He asked me for only one thing, that I carry a message to his beloved in the afterlife.”

That was just about the right level of favor to ask for the kind of violation Clint had suffered. “Is that possible?”

“It is an arduous journey for most but Hel interceded for me, granted me safe passage. I searched for Coulson in all the places the newly dead but I could find no sign of him.” Thor drew a battered sheet of paper from his pocket.

It was sealed but James could imagine Clint’s terrible handwriting sprawled across the paper, full of all the things he’d meant to say. Okay, maybe James was projecting a little but -

“I found him roaming the halls, seeking to escape.”

James must have misheard that. “You *found* him?”

“His grief was inconsolable. He believed his beloved dead and when he could not find him, Coulson feared the worst.” Thor looked at the letter, sadness etched across his face. “It comforted him, that Hawkeye still lived, and he gave me that letter. I have carried it with me since that day, so that if I fell in battle it would still be found and delivered.”

“That’s not possible.” When James picked up the paper and turned it over in his hands, written above the wax seal was ‘Clint’.  “Phil’s alive. I saw him yesterday. You saw him yesterday, when he dropped off Chan.”

“Tis true, we did see Phil Coulson last night but I also saw him more than a year ago, in Valhalla. Long was that letter my burden, James Barnes. I had duties that kept me from delivering it, a rebellion to subdue. When I returned to Earth, Hawkeye had vanished and I was my brother’s keeper. When he said my friend still lived, I expected only more deception.” I swear it, he was dead. Souls who linger with near mortal wounds cannot cross the veil of death. Whatever tales Fury has told,” Eight seconds, Phil had only been dead eight seconds, “They were lies. No healer of Asgard could wake a man whose soul has reached the afterlife.”

“But it’s him.” Please, let it really be him. Clint wasn’t going to survive that level of deception.

“How such a thing could be accomplished, I cannot tell you.” Thor touched the corner of the letter. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Give it to me.” James slipped it into his pants pocket. “Thank you for telling me, Thor.” He was going to have to tell Clint.

* * *

He found Clint alone on the range at noon, when he’d crawled away from meetings long enough to get some lunch. “Got a minute?”

“Sure.” Clint fired the shot that he had nocked and it hit the target perfect dead center, splitting the other arrow like something out of a Robin Hood movie.

James set the letter on the bench. He still hadn’t firgured out what to say but waiting wasn’t going to help. If it wasn’t Phil, they needed to know now. Clint picked it up, turned it over and looked at his name. “Where did you get this?”

“Clint…”

“I have a half dozen of these, you know, in an old footlocker under my bed.” Clint ran his thumb over the wax seal. “He’d write one every time he thought he wasn’t coming home although I gotta admit, they’re usually a bit less formal than this. You ever do that, for Steve?”

He had pressed a letter into Dugan’s hands, just before they dragged him away to Zola’s lab. “Once. After that, we were generally going into mortal peril together.”

“Where did it come from?” Clint didn’t open it, he just slipped it into his quiver.

“Thor had it.” James was expecting some kind of reaction, anything but this calm conversation.

“It’s okay, Barnes. I know he was dead.” Clint unstrung his bow and started to put it away. “I saw the body.”

“You saw…” James remembered, Clint hadn’t been surprised when he’d heard. He’d been shocked.

“I broke into the morgue. I had to be sure.” Clint zipped the case shut, ran the palms of his hands over the smooth top. “He was on ice. When you gave me that phone, I was so angry. The story he told me, there was no way it was true. But he believes it. And he’s Phil, I know he’s Phil. The rest of it doesn’t matter to me.”

“It’s him. You’re sure?”

“Are you sure that it’s really Steve Rogers you crawl into bed with at night?” Clint slung his quiver over one shoulder and grabbed the case. “Phil was on ice for a few months. Steve was down there for seventy years. But you *know*, don’t you, that it’s him? You’re sure.”

“If you say it’s him, then it’s him. I’ll leave it alone.” It doesn’t matter, not really. The rest of them are all hideous science experiments anyway. What’s one more?

* * *

He walked away from his desk at five. Steve made him dinner and they ate it at his kitchen table, sitting side by side, bare feet tangled under the table. They’d eaten a thousand meals together like this but it had been a long time and James reveled in the normalcy of it.

Steve waited until James’ mouth was full before he talked at him. “I’m glad you’re staying but you don’t get to make decisions for me. I get why you thought you could, I let it go when you planned my whole life with Peggy without even asking, but you can’t do this anymore.”

James swallowed, the meal suddenly a bit less idyllic. “I get your point, but what would you have done if they’d come and arrested me?” If his fears about that were unfounded, Marcus had done nothing to discourage them.

“Worn my dress uniform to the trail and sat behind you.” Steve gave his foot a nudge. “Gone on national television and defended you. But it would have been my choice.”

Steve needed a different kind of protection now but that didn’t make changing the habits of a lifetime any easier. “It’s still going to be messy, you know. Just because they can’t arrest us anymore doesn’t mean they can’t make our lives hell.”

“Tony says his lawyers get bored. It will give them something to do.” He slid his hand across the table and James took it in his good hand. “Besides, we could both be dead in six months.”

That was true, even if he didn’t want to think about it. Honestly, though, they should both be long dead. Even an extra six months was a gift. He took one last bite of dinner and asked, “Are you done eating?”

“Done enough. It’ll keep.”

They left the plates and the food on the table and surely their mothers were rolling in their graves but James couldn’t bring himself to care. His life had become a constant cycle of meetings and sleep deprivation, peppered with stolen frantic moments with Steve. He didn’t get a lot of evenings like this, where they could take their time, where he could kiss Steve for what felt like forever and peel him out of his clothes a little bit at a time, listen to the quiet desperate noises he always made.

It was slow and sweet and afterwards they lay there together in the fading light, Steve absently tracing lines on James’ cybernetic arm.

Later, there will be a tense meeting between the Brotherhood and the X-Men that he will have to moderate but things between Erik and Charles will be better after that. There will be people to train, some of them so young it will give James flashbacks to the Red Room’s child soldiers. There will be failed recruitment pitches where Natasha will end up stitching him up in a hotel room. Later, there will be one more war to fight.

Right now though, it is six o’clock on a Tuesday evening and he’s got Steve beside him. That’s more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr: http://roguewrld.tumblr.com/


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